PHPBB Links for SEO

I got an idea.
I have noticed on my travels through out the web that the PHPBB forums are very optimized and the spiders like them.
Would it be advantageous to sign up on some well ranked forums across the net to optimize your search engine rankings.
Say for instance having your url listed in your sig or the www button at the bottom of your post on lot's of forums. Like I have bellow.
This would count as a link to your site. And if you posted on well ranked forums this might work pretty well to boost your search engine rankings.

Just a thought.

I feel like the barer of bad news today...

People have been doing this for the last 10 years. The search engines already caught onto it and pretty much took a good majority of the value of forum footer links away.

However yes - they do still count, and what you have described is a method that thousands of people are doing all over the net.

The recent craze has been posting links on blogs, but there becoming less and less effective all the time.

i agree. dont count on it.