Hi Ryan.
Good going with the forum. Good to know you chose SMF to run it.
The Unread feature tracks your sessions as you mentioned. I don't think it is too difficult, because it checks date last visited vs. time of posts. Unfortunately there are some bugs there.
What I like is the "See reply to your posts" so you can track only the discussions you want
Would like to see a new theme, something that matches the main site.
BTW, I don't think it is a good idea to keep open commenting on the forum, invitation for spam.
