• Sub-forums (come with the forum NOT a mod)
• Who is browsing the forum/thread
• Installation script that will combine into existing access/sql database
• An offical upgrade script when there is a change in the database
  

Not sure about how simple the first one is. That's the kind of thing that's usually a design decision up front. Adding it in later, particularly on a system that's been heavily modified from it's original source, is usually difficult, lot of code goes into obscure places. Great feature for the .net version though. Encapsulation would allow you to have has many lecels within levels as you'd want.

I seem to recall something about tracking who's browsing a particular forum/thread as being a performance issue. I usualy hit the active topics and open up 20/30 windows from there instead of working forum to forum, thread to thread.. Would take a lot of db calls and cookie management. Don't see access holding up under any sort of load in those conditions.

Can't really speak to the other two points, but sounds good to me.

Gullanian wrote: Shouldnt be too much performance problems if done correctly.  You could just simply store another field in active users table with location of user.

Right now, I have 17 windows open on WWF threads. For most of those, I did the "open in new window" right click from active topics. For others I did the same thing from within a thread. Nere use the "Next Topic" Link.

Tracking what threads I have open is going to need a lost of entries. Can't see any way to realistically track what threads I've left. Might be an issue defining what "left a thread" means.