You're right,

I can see how it could be tedious to check the message tab all the time. What I'm going to do is integrate a newer PM system into the forum that gives the option to notify the user of new messages. This also allows me to unpublish the "My Message's" tab.

I'll be doing this sometime next week, please back-up and save any important messages that you might have because they will all be deleted with the upgrade. The message system we're using right now is hoggin more resources from the server than the forums do.