Decided to split it out of another thread. For ease of location.
I never used Active Topics much, but I did see three cool little features that reminded me of Active Topics.
1) Top Right corner of the page. Should say Hello "your user ID", below that how many messages you have, and below that it should say "Show unread posts", and below that "Show unread replies".
2) Recent Post section under the forum main pages. Shows the last 5 posts. Small, but could be cool if you really wanna fire away on something "hot."
3) This one is really cool I think. Look at the main forum page. Look at any category name (like Start Here for example). Look to the right of that name. you should see an icon that looks like this:
or
Those are the "new post" buttons. The white one, means there's no new posts in that category since the last time you looked. Clicking the Blue one will show you all topics with a new posts since last time you looked, in that category.
Also notice, right below the last forum category, there's a description of both icons. And directly to the right of those icons, is a "MARK ALL MESSAGES AS READ" button. Clicking that will set all categories to the white icon. To:
When a new message appears in that category, it'll turn to this: