As you have no doubt noticed GameDev.net has undergone some fairly radical changes recently; most of these seem to be for the better, but as with any change there are some downsides. GameDev.net is a large and busy site and the sheer volume of forums can be a little overwhelming. One feature that was available with the old forum software that I have not been able to find in the new software is the ability to flag certain forums as your favourites and to have a short list of these at the top of the forum listing.
To restore this feature I have written a small userscript for Opera and Firefox (using Greasemonkey). Chrome apparently has some support for Greasemonkey-style userscripts so the Firefox version may work there -- I'm afraid I do not have it to hand to test.
You can add a forum to your Watched Forums list by clicking the Watch Forum button at the top of its page. I hope you find this as useful as I do!
Update: I've modified the userscript to work with collapsed categories. If forums in collapsed categories are missing from your favourites please update your copy of the userscript using the download links above.
In any case, watched forums will show up in a list on the right hand side under the "Watched Content" box. I think we just need to make that more visible. Also, with a watched forum you can configure notifications for new and updated content in that forum, which can be handy for keeping up-to-date with the forum without visiting it.