I'm looking at the browser's title bar now and see this:

How to (1) - Mozilla Firefox

What does the (1) refer to and can it be excluded?

Thanks.

This means it's the 1st page from the forum's section. Go to the second page and you'll see the number changes. The same you can view on any miniBB forum. Page number will appear only if pagination is available.

The number should be there, it's built in the code. For search engine, it's good to have such number, because for the search results in will display different page titles for the same topic then. Read more in Putting page numbers on titles suggestion thread.

Makes sense.

It would be great to be able to have (Page 1) rather than just (1).

Check this thread on how you could do it straight away already, we will try to implement it in the next official release only.