hi ya Janet,
when the circle is moving, that means its a hot topic, and if you have posted in
that topic it will show a little red spot in the circle. Black means you've read it,
red means theres new posts in that topic.
Also, the little thing that looks like a book before the subject.... if you click on
that it will take you to the last place you left off in that topic, and the one to the
right of the post, by the name, date etc, if you click on that one, it takes you to
the last post made in that topic.
Now, the index page is like the contents page of a book, like chapter headings,
and within each heading is the topics. Usually when I open my forum page I click
on "view new posts" and then scroll through and read the red ones.