>Another thing that has always been as long as I can remember is that when I select the buttons 1 "Get all messages for today", 2 –Since yesterday, etc, I am shown messages for my default forum, not the forum I’m currently looking at. Is that supposed to be that way? The reason why I think it isn’t is that I don’t see how to get back to old messages in a different forum without changing my default forum, logging of and on and then using those buttons.

This old approach is pratically not used much during these days. You'd be better to run in virtual thus eliminating the need to switch forums.

Or, from that approach, yes, you have to switch in another forum to see its messages.