Some of this can be explained by the fact we moved from a Windows-based forum called Snitz (which had been pretty much abandoned by its original developers) and moved to this Unix-based system called phpBB (which is a well established, and still very actively forum codebase). The two systems are completely different, so the priority in the switchover was to try and retain as much of the old data as possible, and then custom-fitting the features like Itineraries, etc, so we could take advantage of the new, without losing the content of the old. We did, however, have to make some compromises on the workflow paradigms that long-time V-Flyers would have gotten used to on the old site. It is, afterall, a completely different forum structure and some things just don't operate in the same way.
The New/Active Topics view, for instance, doesn't organise itself by forum, so a 'new topic button' is not possible to add, since it won't know what forum you want to post in. I have tried to figure out if there's a way to change the New/Active Topics view, but even after several hours picking through the code, it really isn't straightforward, as (and excuse me dipping into technicalities here), those shortcut views are all built off of the Search functions, so there isn't one chunk of code that can be edited without having an adverse knock-on effect on multiple areas of the site.
I can, of course, tweak the code where necessary, but there will be limits based on how the underlying phpBB forum code is constructed. I firmly believe this is a vast improvement over Snitz (and a necessary one, as the old codebase was falling apart), but that's not to say that we can't improve it over time.
Pete
