Hey Steven,
Sorry for the late reply on this. I corrected your name a while back in the member directory, but it doesn't look like it fixed the spelling in this post. It should be spelled correctly moving forward. If not, let me know and I will investigate further.
As for email notifications to the forums, I enabled the ability for our members to subscribe to the forums they have an interest in. Try this link under the general preferences: https://honh.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=2167&club_id=75448
Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to attach a notification at the top of the page. We will need to table that one for now.