I was wandering around the site and found some things I was curious about...

First being... What is this Subforum for?

Second being.. When you go to your account control panel, what is the subscriptions part for?

The subscriptions part is for topics that you are "watching". It's a handy way to get email alerts when a new post is made in a thread or forum that you are interested in.

To subscribe to a forum: Click on the forum; there is a link at the bottom of the page that says "Watch Forum".
To subscribe to a thread: When reading a thread, on the top right (in the same horizontal bar as the thread title is displayed in), there is a link that says "Options"; click it, and then select "Watch this topic".

The “Special” area shows recent posts. You can see the most recent posts in both the main and Welcome areas. The “Active Topics” areas at the bottom is the main way I navigate the forum. As I visit most days I don’t miss too much and don’t have to trawl the subforums if I use that.