Which is the best to use?

What do others do?

I prefer Active Topics, which pretty much takes care of the 'Active Posts.' Never know what gem you might uncover if you use the topics, the same ones you might miss if you use posts.

After I drill through the topics, I go back to "Forums" and look for the (red counts) on each forum, and enter to read the ones I think I can contribute to.

Hmmm, never saw that "red count" 'til you mentioned it. But what do they mean??

Gims, that's what I do. I also check unanswered posts. What do you mean by the red count??

Di, that's how many YOU haven't read.
PL, the red count (or unread count) is the bracketed number of unread posts on the 'Forum' view.

It sure is different from awhile back, I use to read the posts answer if need be, and then go to the main ones like, For Sale, Recipes, Pets, Women Writers etc, just to name a few, I opened them all! And scanned them to see if there were any covered right after be posted, thus having NO answers. If any post had a zero, I would bring it up again and add something hoping those that missed it the first time around were this time able to answer it.

I hate for anyone to feel ignored or disrespected when either their post is instantly covered or never answered at all. But now with all the new actively posting members, when I went in this last weekend there were only three with zero answers. That is unbelievable, there use to be a dozen or more. BRAVO to all you posters for keeping this an interesting and very busy place, LOL!!