I realized that very recently I completed 4000 post on DP forum. When I first started, this forum was giving do-follow links, with a quite good amount of traffic. Later the signature links were stopped and forum became no-follow, so guess not much help came from the forum. Anyways I also think that interacting with people and experts in the forum is a big help to learn and be in touch with the latest news in all fields. So would you think these 4000 posts which are there now in this forum somewhere with each page indexed in google, they are backlinks, just post or I really wasted my time ?
Depends what you did it for. You don't post in forums to get links - you do it to ask and answer questions. Forum links are not of much value in the eyes of Google. So, to answer your question, have you learned anything from the forum?
A forum should be used to learn and contribute more than anything else. Sitewide links aren't valued the same as individual links. Because of the exposure, it us obviously good for traffic, but 4000 links (sitewide) is not the same as 4000 links on different sites, because the links come from the same site.
Yes infact, since so many years, the ONLY two forums, I have accounts and seriously involved in are DP and WF. All the other forums, I dont even remember, when did I logged in last time. Most of the things I was able to learn from here was much about SEO, link building, search engines importance etc.... I did some sales too here, where I had good as well as bad experiences, but overall I must say I have been in a positive side.
If you are considering DP as a source to generate backlinks for your website by putting link in the signature box and you are posting with that intention then I think you are just wasting your time. I think we all should utilize this forum as a great platform to learn new things and grab the opportunity to be in the front row of Digital Marketers. I registered here around 5 years ago (I've seen your posts in my early days as well) and I rarely put any link in the signature (However, I used to promote my "Sell" related posts in early days ) but I still find it worth to spend few hours/week on Digital Points.