I knew that might be a little confusing, sorry about that. But more specifically, when you log into Orthogate. . . .it takes you to the Orthogate HOME PAGE (don't go to the forums just yet). All the way to the right of the Home Page is a column with "Carpe Terram" at the top. Directly underneath is a box with the "OSSR" gold ring. Directly underneath that box is another box entitled "members on line." And then there will be a list of people currently on line. If you have logged in already you should see your name here (i.e. TiLock). Immediately to the right of your name there will ALWAYS be that icon that looks like a "sales-tag." If you have any personal messages, they will show up PRECEEDING that icon as a "number," a "backslash," and another "number." (i.e. TiLock 3/4 'icon'). The first number is the number of "unread" messages. The second number is total messages in your inbox. If there are no numbers there and just an icon, then you have no messages. To access those messages, just click on the numbers. Hopefully that doesn't confuse you even more. Problem with that is, you have to log into orthogate to get notification. You can't just come as a "visitor" and find out if you have new messages.
hope this helps. sorry about the long message.