Because it’s local you don’t have to worry about the security issue too much. In fact self signed certificates are not necessarily that unsecured either.
However when you launch a project live make sure you have ssl properly setup with your host 🙂
Not sure what happened with email notifications, but I have a redesign and rebuild of the site coming soon that will resolve this and some other weird issues.
You can always just go to javascriptforwp.com/forums to find you thread. Sorry about the inconvenience!!!