Status Icon Help

[58D]

I would like to change my status icons around a little bit. Here is what I'd like to do using the stock icons:

* New posts = Red open letter
* Old posts = blue closed letter
* Keep the "dot" functionality.

My attempt to do this was to replace the blue open letter icons with copies of the corresponding red icon image, in the /forum/images/statusicons/ folder. Then I turned off the hot thread feature in the Control Panel options.

Ok, that probably does not make sense but, at any rate, it did not work. I thought it would simply replace the blue icon with the red ones when there were new posts. All of the Icons remained blue however.

What is the "right way to do this? Thanks.