Discourse menus, preferences and notifications
The ☰ hamburger icon shows menu links to unread posts and each available category.
Clicking on your icon shows recent notifications for you. Then click on your your name then Preferences. The various tabs within Preferences let you customise your notifications.
If you want to have mails for every single post (except muted items) then choose "Mailing list mode" on Preferences+Emails. Otherwise use various Preference options to determine when you get emailed - and notified in your browser if you wish.
As described above, in "Mailing List Mode" then you will get all messages and replies sent out to your email. Alternatively, you can get an Activity Summary mail (like a digest) which includes all recent activity on unmuted topics.
Otherwise, you can get notifications by mail or as browser/app notifications. You can be "watching", "tracking" or "watching first post" in each category. You can also "track" individual topics that are of interest. And you can "mute" particular categories or users.
"Watching" gets in touch for every new topic and reply, "tracking" mainly shows you new topics (I think). "Watching First Post" only alerts you to new topics in that category. If you've seen new messages quickly then you won't get emails sent.
When viewing a category, you can also choose what notifications you want from the icon in the top right hand corner of the screen.
