Would it be feasible to add a second “mark all as read” link or button somewhere near the top of the front (main index) page, to avoid having to scroll down to reach the current one?

There is one at the top of every Forum index, though not at the top of the main forum index.

However, her is a trick you might like. I start my day by clicking the Show new replies to your posts kink, once I have dealt with those I then click the Show unread posts since my last visit link.

I browse those unread posts and select those I feel I can answer, etc. I then refresh the list and click the Mark as read button.

At the top and bottom of those lists there is a Mark as read, but I wouldn’t use the one in the ‘Show new replies to your posts’ list as I don’t know if that would spill over into the other unread topics.

I’m using the Babylon forum Theme, so I don’t know if that differs from yours.

Thanks, David. Since there’s a number of forum categories that I never bother with (linux, for example), I like to mark-as-read from the main index page once I’ve looked at my regular “haunts”.

It’s probably simplest to overcome my probably terminal case of congenital sloth and just scroll down to the bottom of the main index page for that. I was just hoping that adding a second link for the same thing wouldn’t be a major project for the admins here.

Guess I’ve been spoiled by the Wilders forums, which run on different software (phpBB, I think) – there, you can mark everything (i.e., all messages in all forums & subforums) as read from anywhere except within a topic.

(Edit) Just did my daily rounds at Wilders, and there’s a couple of corrections to the last paragraph above. They use vBulletin for their forums, and the “mark-all-read” link is accessible from within topics, just not when you’re in the middle of doing a posting or reply.

For me the beauty of using those two options is a) I can easily find those topics I have participated in, if there are new replies and b) new topics/unread topics, so I don’t have to go looking in multiple forums. Then it is a case of browsing those I want to view and click the mark as read button.

I don’t know if the suggestion, even though it has merit is something that the Admin can change as that I believe would be down to the forum software (SMF), if it had any such option.

I’m not sure I like the idea of being able to mark ‘all’ as read within a topic as accidental use could make life more difficult to find topics you might have been following.