Help with setting up top 10 list

Okay, this is a long question/request. Here is what I want to do:

I have just one home page (portal page) that people visit when they type my url. On this page, all I want to have is:

1. A link to the forum section (the index.php3 page) - I can handle this. :)

2. A top ten list of Most Recent Posts box
a. This list will be the most recent replies/new threads. When someone comes in and posts a reply to any thread or starts a new thread, the new message moves to the top of the list on the home page (portal) and the last one (#10) drops off.
b. I would like to show on this Most Recent Posting List: just the title of the thread and the person who replied/started the thread, along with the icon that was used to start the thread.
c. I would of course like these to be linkable to the actual thread, and the users name to be linked to his/her profile

3. A Most Popular Topics box
a. A list of the top 5 most popular topics in a given time frame (say 24 hours, if this is possible)
b. I would like these to be linkable and would only show the thread title and the icon of the thread when it was started.

Any help? I'm getting a grasp on how to change things inside of the forums, but I am still pretty new. If I could add the two info boxes I think it would be a big improvement to my site.

Please be as specific as possible. Steps or actual code would be nice. :) Also, I'm using FrontPage for the portal page. I read I might be able to use the INCLUDE command to include something on my portal page. If not, that's another question??

Thanks in advance.


[Edited by SoccerGazette.com on 09-28-2000 at 03:21 PM]

Sounds like you are looking for something like this: http://www.progresstalk.com ?

Alot of this was done by TechTalk, Eva2000 and others and is pretty well documented on this thread here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=2658

-Chris

Chris, thanks......

But, I'm really looking for something like BigSoccer does. You can see the example at BigSoccer.com

I'm going to be doing away with my soccer site and moving on to something else, so I'm not trying to copy them with the same subject.

The top 10 most recent posts (they use 15) is on the right side of their main page. The popular topics are in the middle.

This is what I'm looking for exactly. Any tips?

If I understand correctly, this can be accomplished by simply editing the output produced by TechTalk's hack...