All we really need to know about the the list of boards upfront is what they are and how many new messages since our last visit. We also need to be able to quickly select the next one to read.
If you move the sort options into the profile you could then put the list of boardnames (with a small newcount flag) into the menu where it would be always visible. The info about the board could go into a lead message "About this Board" which would be marked as keep and would at the same time get rid of the dead timestamp on new boards.
For a New User, the opening screen would be the Welcome - please register. When they hit the submit button it would immediately take them to the UserProfile where an additional choice would be "What Board do you want to see first on each visit?" - defaulting to Announcements.
