My confusion – this forum

Apology: I posted this “Computer dummy-New here. Is there a page somewhere that explains how this forum works e.g. get notices (email) when someone responds, view my posts etc.?” on this page (https://plus.google.com/u/0/).
Browsing around since, I’ve found this stuff:
http://forums.sketchup.com/t/welcome-to-sketchup-community/22747
I’m working on my 2nd PhD in Screw-Up, so I’ll be doing more stuff like this and asking a lot of dumb questions here.