Sign In Confusion

I have been a member of these forums almost since the turn of the century, but this version has me totally confused. My main question is, how do I stay signed in? Once signed in it is unclear how to navigate to the forums I usually visit, such as Virus and Spyware. When I go to that forum page, it just shows the little figure in the upper right corner urging me to sign in, but when I do, it takes me to a whole new page, and not back to that forum. If I manually return to that forum, it once again indicates that I am not signed in. Any suggestions as to how to fix this?.