Forum Icons - what do they mean?

[Cam]

Apologies if this is actually listed somewhere. I have searched the site and cannot find any reference and although it's not critical, I'm intrigued.

Where all the topics are listed, regarding the icons on the left hand side of each topic, some animate, some not, some have a red border, some have an asterix, some have a padlock symbol (locked?) some have a lightbulb kind of thing going on - what do they all mean? Is there a legend or similar that can decipher these glyphs?

[Richard]

To be honest, I never notice the icons. You can see the popular topics by the number of pages, and the threads with unread posts have the “Go to last unread post in the topic” icon.

I’d turn off the icons, do they help anyone?

edit - I should add that I browse the forum via the "view new posts" page, so looking at icons to see if there are new posts in a forum is irrelevant. search.php?search_id=newposts

Here’s the explanation from the phpBB forum http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 5#p3706355

Two general points
- Red icons are unread items, blue/grey are read
- A star on any topic means you have posted in it

- Announcement
- Sticky topic
- Read topic
- Unread topic
- Read topic that you have posted in
- Unread topic that you have posted in
- Hot topic
- Locked topic
- Moved topic
- Forum with subforums (which have been read)
- Forum with subforums (which are unread)
- Link forum
- Attachment
- Go to last post in the topic
- Go to last unread post in the topic
- Subforum read
- Subforum unread

[Cam]

I could not have received a better answer. That answers it spot on. Thanks!