#1) Tuning MySQL has a lot of variables. It's not something I have much experience in, but there are a large number of variables that can make a big difference. Over on ubbdev.com there are a couple of posts dedicated to this discussion, they are a bit old but the basics should still apply and you might take a look at these:
https://www.ubbdev.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/51#2) What happens is it basically tracks off of their last visit to the individual forum. So, say there is a new topic in forum A. User visits that forum and reads the other topics in the forum, but not this new one. They later come back to visit, and it will consider everything since that last visit to be new. So even though they didn't read that particular thread earlier, it will still assume they did and scroll to what's been made since they were in that forum earlier. It's a bit hard to explain, but we can't track on a per topic basis, so we can only go off of the last visit to the forum.
What we'll probably do is add in an additional option on the postlist display to either go to the first post or go to the first "new" post. We had this in earlier versions, with a little arrow next to each topic that had new posts. Clicking on the arrow would take you to the new posts, while clicking on the topic would take you to the first post. We may go back to this.
#4) Under Display Options -> General -> Post/Reply Options you'll find the bit where you can specify the maximum subject length.
Love the article you made, very nice
