I personally don't think they will penalize them, but rather throw some of the pages in the Omitted Results, but footer sitewides are still great spots in my opinion and always will be!

Webmasters are always divided abou this, some swear by it, other swear at it, don't know which of them is right but I still us it to promote my own site, don't use it for client sites.

Well one thing is for sure, sites like the GalleryMenalto and others have been giving away scripts for years with sitewide footers and I know that isn't the only coding in the scripts but they manage to get 6s, 7s and in Gallery Ms case, an 8 in their forum and sites!

I also believe a sure fire way to get in to terms quick is to get yourself some template sponsor links!! It has worked very very well for me with some sites!

I agree with you, sitewide links works wonders, it certainly works for my LBS site, the last time I look on Yahoo explorer it has about 20,000 or so backlinks, 98% build from the licensing terms that you need to leave the link back there. Same with more popular scripts than my humble LBS... they have thousands of thousans of links BUT
I remeber about 4 years or so ago when template monster was PR0 by Google. The reason was because of sitewide links. Template monster then changed links from their affiliate footer to non direct link and Google restore them back to PR8 ..

So, I think there is probably a sitewide link radar, if is below a certian amount, it okay, but if it trips the radar, google will penalise you.

A good example would be PHPBB

I would agree, as long as you don't go ver the top it should be ok

could you expand further on PHPBB, why did you use them as example?

As far as I am aware, their sitewide link which appears on PHPBB forums is not counted by Google as a sitewide link when it comes to the PR Update. I think it's just counted as one link per PHPBB forum.

Hope this makes sense

Now I understand what you mean

I think he is saying that google doesn't count all the links on the inner pages but just the home page link of every forum...is that correct?

I've heard something similar...