Hm, I guess I've missed something, but is there a feature that allows you to subscribe to certain forums and get some kind of message when you enter the page that there has been a new post in one of the forums you're subscribed to. It's a hassle (well not to hard ) to go through every forum that you're interested in, in order to find new posts.
YEs you can subscribe to a forum or to a thread. look for links such as "subscribe to this forum" or "Receive updates to this thread" at the top of each page in the forums.
You can also set it up in your personal profile to automatically subscribe to any thread you respond to. I love it. I've got a dedicated folder in Outlook for FutureProducers threads. The only thing that is a pain, is that the rule doesn't always run when they come into the inbox.... Still haven't figured that one out.