How to get notifications from Dreamwidth
or, how to do fandom in real time without refreshing the page and playing spot the difference all the time
Notfications go to your DW inbox but you can also make them go to the email address associated with your DW account.
"Tracking" is DW's name for opting in to activity notifications. Want to follow a comment thread on a community post? You can track it and get notified in your DW inbox and also by email when there are new replies.
You can also get email notifications for when an account or community posts a new entry, or only for new entries that have a specific tag.
Tracking respects the privacy and other audience restrictions you put on your posts, so accounts that are tracking your personal journal or a community won't be notified of friends-only or members-only content you make.
BUT! If you post something publicly in error, then change the audience settings, the tracking notifications will have already gone out. So check your post settings carefully when you're not posting to the world.