[@robkk Moderator 12 years, 4 months ago]

nevermind i pretty much got it

looked at https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/freshness-link/

used <?php bbp_forum_last_topic_title(); ?> to get the title of the last recent topic

and some code i had that robin gave me some time ago

end function is this

<div class="bbp-forum-last-topic-name"><a href="<?php bbp_forum_last_topic_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php bbp_forum_last_topic_title(); ?>"><?php bbp_forum_last_topic_title(); ?></a></div>
<span class="bbp-last-post-by-author"><?php printf( __( '%1$s', 'bbpress' ),bbp_get_forum_freshness_link( array() ) ); ?></span>
<?php _e(' by ', 'bbp'); ?>
<span class="bbp-forum-freshness-author"><?php bbp_author_link( array( 'post_id' => bbp_get_forum_last_active_id(), 'size' => 14 ) ); ?></span>