Jennifer S wrote
many forums have a button that will display all the new posts since your last log on. do we have on of those and i just don't see it? if not, can we add that?
Yes, we have that too! When you open the forums, just click on the first category that says "All Public Forums" and it will display all the recents posts. Just look for the big blue globe icon. 
Also, if you look carefully, the forums that have new posts in them have a slightly different icon from the forums that have been read. In the forums list, if you see this icon 
then all posts are read. If you see this icon 
there are new posts to be read. If you click on that icon to go into that particular forum, the threads with unread posts will be highlighted in bold type.
Hope that helps!