I don't know about the emails -- have you checked your spam?
As far as slowness, it's something other users have pointed out too, but Dream Host is claiming innocence and everything in SMF looks good...
This was the last email I ever received from the website:
I haven't touched the settings ever this year, and all the sudden they stopped coming. This was mainly the reason why I stopped visiting the forums, because I was assuming that I wasn't needed as people were from what I guess, were not commenting... but I was wrong.
Dreamhost lies, the forums has dramatically gotten slower, sometimes to the point of taking an actual 15 seconds to load..