You don’t need to post in a topic to follow it. You can set any specific topic to ‘watching’ so you’ll get a notice whenever there’s a new post in that specific topic. A lot of the settings are preset in the way that’s most convenient for most members. it’s all explained here:
It’s quite a lot but most of it you don’t need.
Than here’s some info on this forum in particular:
Indeed, IMO the way the forum works has some annoying features. Like the big number of topics which makes it hard to find stuff unless you bookmark posts and topics. But all in all, and as with most things, it simply takes some getting used to.