Shouldn't there be a way to do this with the search function? I'm thinking you could do a search for posts from the source code project in the last year, only display the top 5 and output the result to a file that could be imported onto the main page.
EDIT: Settings should be something like this:
Keyword: *
User name:
Forum: The Source Code Project (50)
Posts Wrom: ZLKBRNVW
Results by: Last posting date in descending order
The two problems are that "Keyword" does not accept less than 3 letters/numbers, and that there is no way to easily export the listing given back to a site from the search result. The first should be easy to eliminate by editing the PHP. The second might be harder, but likely not too hard.