I realize I'm partly to blame, but this thread has gotten off topic. You guys should use the private messaging system for this.
Jules, keeping the thread off-topic :-) , that is fine if you actually know that you have a private message waiting for you. I guarantee most users here open the forums read /post and leave. I don't think it is much of a priority for any posters to check if someone is sending them a private message.
I come to the forums a couple of times a day and never give a second thought to see if I have a private message waiting. I don't think a lot of users even know that option exists. I was playing around with some of the options recently and by sheer chance stumbled upon a private message that had been sent 10 days previously.
Good lord that's a lot of off topic posts in 20 minutes. Here we go...
Correct, this should happen by default, if it's not the likely culprit is your browser, and it's probably an older version of Internet Explorer. For this and hundreds of other reasons, if anybody is using Internet Explorer they should switch to Google Chrome. After downloading and installing, instead of clicking that blue "e" to get on the interwebz, you click the chrome icon. That way sites will load a whole lot faster, your browser will start in 1 second instead of 5, and fancy pop up messages and such will work as they are supposed to.
That wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't seen that tennis photo in Mr. Howe's publication
If you're not getting pop ups and it's not a browser issue, have a look at your settings. Click "Forum Actions" up the top and click general settings. You can set to be emailed when you get a PM, and select pop up options etc. You can also set your thread subscription options, and then for example when you click "quick links" and then "subscribed threads" you can see all threads you have posted in and whether they have new posts. Also, pop ups or no, you can still access your PM's from the top right of the forum under notifications.