[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by kira

I guess to keep it flexible so that others besides me would find such a plugin useful, maybe the best format would be a straightforward table, looking much like a vbadvanced block. Or even better, an unordered list? They're so easily styled through css, if one chooses.

Kira, try these for size. You need to import the xml plugin, then patch the forumhome template to display $links['new'] and $links['hot'] - these each contain tables without the top and bottom table tags. The attached forumhome.txt shows one way to do this, and the attached links_vbalinks.txt gives a modified template for the individual table rows which adds the link description to the name/number of hits.