I think this is going to be my approach.



The first problem I'll need to tackle is combining the primary icon with the "lock" function.

I'm going to remove the expand icons and functionality to clean up the look of the forum, to suite my tastes. Plus I find less distraction the better for my users - who seem easily confused.

One feature I'd like to look into adding is a page count after the subject, I've seen that other places and can see its usefulness.

A forum might look like the attached after some tinkering.