2 questions

[Wheresatom]

I have 2 questions about my website at this time.  First, I know that linking to your site from another is a good way to get your results to the top of a search engine.  What I want to know though, is does it have to be a text based link like www.energymodelhelp.com or does the link to the left of this post count? 

Secondly, have I correctly enabled my robots.txt file to instruct bots they have access?  I just copied and pasted the syntax that seemed like it was required.  It really was pretty easy.  I was quite pleasantly surprised. 

Thanks in advance.   

[karlbenson]

1. It doesn't have to be a text link.
The popularity of that site linking to you, the popularity of the page, and other factors all contribute towards the weight of any given backlink.

2. Yes your robots.txt is corrently set to allow all spiders free reign over your forum

[Wheresatom]

Thank you so much!

[H]

Glad Karl's answers helped. Additionally you may want to search this site for robots.txt as there is some good information to be found