[chrishajer]

Looks like the function bb_tag_heat_map takes some parameters. In your tags.php template file, you will find something like this:

<?php bb_tag_heat_map( 9, 38, 'pt', 80 ); ?>

That calls this function:

function bb_tag_heat_map( $args = '' ) {

$defaults = array( 'smallest' => 8, 'largest' => 22, 'unit' => 'pt', 'limit' => 45, 'format' => 'flat' );

So, the smallest is 9pt, largest is 38pt, UOM is pt (points) and the limit, at least in my template, is to return 80 tags. That much you can control from just calling the function with different parameters. As far as most recent tags, I am uncertain how to do that, but it sounds like it would be a good plugin (not sure if this does what you want: I don’t think so):

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/enhanced-tag-heat-map/

The information is stored in the database when something is tagged, so I’m pretty sure you could grab the latest N tags by date, DESC and display them as Recent Tags.