Many of my participants complain about having to scroll to the end of the Message Forum to see if there are any new posts. Is it possible to show a "new post" notification on the home page whenever someone does add one?

We won't be doing anything else with the current message forums, but the upcoming threaded message forums will be pretty much a clone of what you see here, where new items are listed by date entered. The threaded forums are behind the new Preferences area and the 6 new themed designs. But, they're coming shortly.