Okay. Meanwhile I will keep watching to see if it is something I’m doing wrong in testing or observing. I am new to SP, after all.
Thanks for your help. 
Could you check a couple of things for me.
First – go to the forum admin > Options > Global Display Settings. Unread Posts settings. Do you have a positive value in the default number of unread posts to show?
Second – logged in as the member (not admin), open the SP profile > Options Tab > Edit Display Options panel. Do you also have a positive value there for the maximum number of unread posts to list?
Just to clarify a couple of things – which sound obvious I know but easy to overlook – your list will always exclude your own forum posts and, when logged in as a member, will also exclude any posts awaiting moderation.
1. 50
2. 50 (though I just now turned on the permission for users to change this)
3. Yes, understood. Those are not at play. I just retested to be sure. (I don’t even have post moderation turned on because I’ve got a nice, good, private group of people.)
mmm. I have to admit that at the moment I am struggling with why this would remain zero at all times. I have not had this particular behaviour reported before.
Are you using any sort of WP cache plugin by any chance?
I’m not using any WP cache.
However, my WP integration with InfusionSoft uses a plugin that caches customer information (so it isn’t constantly pulling data from InfusionSoft). Could that be affecting the forum?
I think that this is most unlikely although we could look into that as a last resort. There is one more setting it might be worth looking at first. Forum Admin > Components > Login and Registration: Tracking Timeout. Does that have a positive value?
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Sorry – it might look like I am ignoring you but in truth I am just stumped and have been trying to work out what we should look into next!
While I find it hard to consider a connection perhaps you could let me know the name of this plugin you are using so I can at least read up on it. Maybe a link to the plugin page…?
I think it is very doubtful that this plugin has any connection even though I would love to lay the blame on it! But we can, perhaps, test this to make sure.
When you log in to the forum as an ordinary member, on the front/main page of the forum (what we call Group View) you should have a section below the group/forum listing of new/updated topics. Are you seeing such a list?
Yes, and that appears to be working. There’s a bit of a delay I’ve noticed, however.
Update: I logged in as my test user this morning and all the drop-down up top and the number were correct and showed new posts! Yippee! I don’t know what kind of magic you worked but as of now, all seems to be okay and I’m really glad.
I will let you know if I have trouble again. Thank you for all your prompt help.
Well I would like to say that was because I was thinking so hard about the problem!
Actually I am just as puzzled by it starting to work as I am by it not working in the first place. But – yes -see how it goes and monitor progress…
Me, too… Although it was 24 hours in between the logins. I’m almost afraid to test that login in more frequent intervals! If I do and the posts aren’t up to date, I guess we can figure there’s a delay/cache something.
I’ll let you know…
Well currently logging out or timing out does reset the new post list. This is something we are working to change in the next update.