if you subscribe to a forum, does that mean you will be alerted of someone posts on it?

and while we're on the subject of forums, how do you get the person's name in blue so it alerts them?

To alert someone of their name in a forum post, you just put @ and their name in caps. IE:

Then, they get a little event alert:

Forum Mention (1) You have been mentioned on subscribing to a forum by Spritey

You don't get alerted when a new post is made to a subscribed thread. But if you check your page of subscriptions, it's ordered by how recent the last post was, so whenever someone posts on a board, it moves to the top of the list of your subscribed boards.