It is common for many Chinese people to have new clothes to celebrate the new year (Chinese Lunar New Year or Spring Festival). Although it is a little really late, chinaSMACK finally has some new clothes for the year of the cow to replace the original design (see right).
Here are some of the new changes and improvements:
Cleaner & More Organized
- Better Home Page: Our new home page features the latest post and the most recent comments. It also provides simple previews for recent content.
- About Section: Learn more information about chinaSMACK in the About menu.
- Category Sections: The category pages are now more organized.
- Author & Contributor Profiles: Learn more about chinaSMACK’s authors and contributors in the new “Authors & Contributors” page or just click on their name when you read one of their posts.
New & Improved Features
- Better Search: Easily search all of chinaSMACK’s posts with our Google Custom Search Engine located in the navigation menu.
- Subscribe to chinaSMACK: You can subscribe to chinaSMACK by RSS or by email. Just click on the two orange links next to the Search.
- Reply Directly to Comments: You can now reply directly to someone’s comment by clicking on “Reply” on the bottom of each comment. This will make it easier to have conversations (or fights).
- Get a Gravatar: This is not new but I hope more regular visitors will get a Gravatar. It is very simple. Just upload a picture and every time you use your email address in a comment, it will automatically show that picture on many blogs like chinaSMACK. It will make chinaSMACK a little better looking.
Join chinaSMACK
- Become a chinaSMACK Member: You can now join this website and become a member using your Google Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID.
- Add & Invite Friends: After you join chinaSMACK, you can add other members as friends or invite your own friends to come visit chinaSMACK.
- More To Come: In the future, we will add new features or do special things only for chinaSMACK members so please join!
More Coming Soon…
There will probably be some problems that will need to be fixed and there are also more things that have not yet been added yet. I will post new announcements about them later.
I hope everyone likes the new design. Please let me know what you think in the comments.
Related Posts:
- chinaSMACK celebrates its 1-year anniversary with a new Personals feature, announcement of the new official t-shirt design winner, and its traffic statistics. » 12 comments
- Vote for your favorite chinaSMACK t-shirt design, created and submitted by chinaSMACK readers for our 1-year anniversary design contest! Voting ends July 8th! » 24 comments
- South China Morning Post becomes a sponsoring advertiser on chinaSMACK.com. Also, chance to win a free chinaSMACK T-shirt by answering why you visit chinaSMACK. » 33 comments
- Helen Elfer features chinaSMACK and interviews Fauna in the 2008 December issue of That's Shanghai magazine. » 18 comments
- A list of the latest chinaSMACK website changes and improvements, including important information for comment voting. Also, offer some helpful feedback. » 24 comments
1 Year Anniversary: Thank You! 
Vote For Your Favorite 1 Year chinaSMACK T-Shirt Designs 
SCMP.com & Free chinaSMACK T-Shirt Contest 
chinaSMACK Featured In That’s Shanghai 
Design Changes & New Comment Voting Feature 
IMHO, the second section from the top, the “recent comments”, is kinda redundant. The squares are too big for one-liners and too small for long paragraphs. And there is already a section of “recent comments” at the bottom.
Congratulations Fauna – I’m sure it was lots of work to get this the way you and your team/friends wanted it, and will make for a better experience for all. Thanks for ChinaSMACK.
I am getting excited about the “more to come”, as I said before, Chinasmack should be a fully-featured community site, and I believe that’s exactly what you guys are trying to achieve.
Nice! not sure if im digging that giant block of ads on the right tho
yup, i agree.. Your website is drowning in ads. Please do something about it. I know the money is tempting, but you are bout to shoot yourself in the foot and defeat you own purpose, because people wont like your website so much if you will swamp us with ads on every corner. Advertisers will also be discouraged from advertising on your site if they will see soo many other ads here.
1. i suggest you limit the size of the ads you charge (this way you can squeze in a few more)(make it 3 times smaller than now)
2. get an “exclusive” long term advertising contract with ONE of the sponsors (less work for you, and you can charge MUCH more).
Like Joe, I’m not too sure about the block of ads on the sidebar. If all three show the same advertisement, it looks incredibly cheesy. That said, come on, this website isn’t “drowning” in ads. As I said below, there hasn’t been much of an increase in ads AND they’re off to the side. They’re fairly non-intrusive and they even have little borders around them to differentiate them.
I don’t think chinaSMACK has ANY sponsors. These all seem to be Google AdSense units. If chinaSMACK goes primetime and gets serious advertisers, I’m sure the advertising situation could change, but again, I don’t really think its excessive right now. You’ll be blind to the sidebar soon enough anyway.
To be honest, im enjoying the site so far. So, keep up the good work.
Well, my company specializes in data management and usability – and quite frankly, from a professional opinion, the new website design fails horribly. I’m not sure who took charge of the aesthetic decision making or usability, but they should be fired.
The recent comments was better before the change. The advertisements are big and obstructive, and push the main content of the site into obscurity. “Members” and “Recent Readers” is useless and takes up major space. “Pictures and Videos” and “Stories” only line up in IE and Chrome, and table shifting occurs on Firefox – should test these things before rolling out designs. The raw amount of information coalesced and ‘organized’ on the main page is destructive – not convenient – and there is repeated sections and linkage throughout which takes away from the meat of the site, which is ultimately stories and posts on stories. There are other things, but eh..whatever.
我实在不高兴用英语跟你说，你的英语肯定也比我好，那我还是用中文吧，但是你的话实在是太刻薄了。。。。。。
有广告是很正常的事情，大部分网站都有广告，那又怎么了？你们不喜欢那就忽略呗，你们这些人实在是“站着说话不腰疼”~
Fauna, 我永远支持你！
100% agree.
非常感谢， Tom 2
不知道为什么我太生气了。
my 2 cents:
1. Alignment of boxes on front page is generally good except that the “new design!” label beside the title ‘ChinaSMACK’ is misplaced on large screen (mine is 1920×1050): its horizontal position should be relative to the main layer rather than to the left border of browser window.
2. The big “Recent Comments” box on front page is useless IMO.
3. The front page is too fragmented. Instead of dividing the left panel into sub-panels “pictures and videos” and “stories” with many small boxes, I prefer the old style: only one left panel and more texts for each article on front page. I believe it’s better to categorize articles according to content rather than whether it has pictures/videos or not. A “category” sidebar is missing.
4. I prefer moving the “recent posts”, “recent comments”, “most viewed” and “most commented” areas to the right panel under the first advertisement box and above the “Members” area.
5. Though I “registered” as a ChinaSMACK member, it doesn’t automatically fill the name and mail blanks in the “leave a reply” form after I log in. Certain functionality is lacked.
Can’t believe I agree with Rick in China but he’s completely right. The new design actually sucks. It’s cluttered visual overload.
Can’t we have a day of congratulations for all of the hard work that must have gone into the upgrades, as I am sure that a lot of thought was put into it! Maybe some of the more critical opinions can hold for a week or so until there has been some usage. For all of the ‘e’ industry experts – there would be fewer ads if one of you could offer your services for free of hosting or data management and usability.
不管怎么说这是别人的心血，有好的建议大家可以提，不要随随便便就suck、suck的，这是非常不负责任的表现，我们大家应该也希望ChinaSMACK越来越好啊，估计让你们来设计说不定会更差！口下留情吧！
@Tom2
RE: “there would be fewer ads if one of you could offer your services for free of hosting or data management and usability.”
If that was an issue, perhaps a post indicating the intentions of the site and/or monetary problems for hosting, perhaps some of the “‘e’ industry experts” could have chimed in with suggestions and/or service offerings.
@MJ
Congratulating in order to give face, which is probably what you spend your life doing in the hopes of not offending anyone, leads to ultimately negative results as opposed to direct criticisms which, while may seem ‘offensive’ to carebears who take everything personally, should ultimately lead to more productive and/or corrective measures to make things better. If you were a fat girl in a crop-top asking “does this make me look fat” with yer fat belly hanging out and your carebear boyfriend says “no, honey, you look so sexy as always” – the net result is you embarassing yourself in public…enjoy.
ChinaSMACK has always had a section within the site asking for donations and support.
I can’t find the link within your post to your company that specializes in data management and usability. Is it possible you could offer this up so that we can see an example of what you are referring to? I am sure that it will be a revelation for the people that spent hours getting the ChinaSMACK site upgraded, and as you have expressed there is a need for them to have help – are you offering your services for free?
Dude, Rick, she’s not the delusional “fat girl in a crop-top” asking if she looks fat or sexy. She’s just the girl with a new outfit she probably put a lot of time into assembling and is now asking what you think.
Yeah, she’s clearly proud of the new design, but why shouldn’t she be? Do you know her personally? Do you know her very well? Is there a reason for you to expect that she should have better taste or be more proficient with web design but instead failed horribly?
Maybe you don’t like it, or maybe you think it’s bad, but I don’t think its fair of you to suggest she was “asking for it,” asking for your tact-less complaints, as you do with your analogy above. You’ve been a long-time visitor here just as I have. I would’ve imagined that she and chinaSMACK has earned just a wee bit more tact or respect from you. No one is asking you to lie or help her “embarass herself in public” but geez, man, you could be a lot less rude about it.
After consideration, you’re right, my points weren’t written as I perhaps should have written them. To clarify something else, the reply with the analogy is not a critique of CS or Fauna, it’s a reply to MJ.
The redesign isn’t that bad. There are some positive changes, the comments reply tree structuring for example, but the main page, imo, was better before. Shanghaiist does a good job of mingling in tons of advertising, hiding ‘features’ (like [most popular] or whatever) in buttons that restrict it to the few who want to go there, and maintain a content rich main page which ultimately keeps the focus on reading. (Not to imply it doesn’t have its own flaws)
@Tom2
I wasn’t offering any services, my company doesn’t do web projects like this, while we do web development it’s only for interfacing to back-end systems we build such as configuration/monitoring/data mgmt. That being said, it’s not my company as in I own it, it’s my company as in I work for them. I also don’t use forums as a means to advertise, and was only implying that involving the community which uses the site may bring some valuable advice.
Purely for the sake of conversation (and maybe for chinaSMACK’s consideration):
I like Shanghaiist, but ironically, I think it is a far better example of what jay mentioned above about having ads in literally every corner. It works, and is quite reminiscent of SmartShanghai’s old design too. However, two things to be fair:
1. It takes up far more real estate (especially above the fold) than the ads here in chinaSMACK. More annoyingly, clicking anywhere outside the main content column (even when you think you’re clicking in blank white space) will take you to that advertiser’s website. It LITERALLY has ads in every corner of the page. Now, that’s a good implementation of a big ad design-wise, but it is, as I said, a little annoying.
2. Shanghaiist can do city-specific ads because of its audience and focus, whereas chinaSMACK would have a harder time of it. I’m not sure I want to see page-sized Kowa Dental or China Odyssey Tours ads surrounding the content here.
3. That said, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion about how the content and advertising is integrated. Personally, I always felt Shanghaiist was a bit cluttered as well but not too bad.
For example, their sidebar features 2 ad units before getting to a navigation box. It then has 2 more ad units before getting to recent comments and popular posts. Then 3 more ad units underneath that. More importantly, the text on that sidebar is pretty small (or I’m getting old and my eyesight is going).
4. There are two viewing modes for Shanghaiist: Summary and Full. I, for one, didn’t even discover this feature until just now. Shanghaiist has a more cluttered navigation bar to me.
- In Summary Mode(default?): The main content column is pretty similar to the category/archive pages here on chinaSMACK. I’d actually say the ones here are less cluttered (less meta information like author, date, recommends, share), more organized/consistent. On Shanghaiist, the individual post thumbnail images usually tend to the right hand side but not always and they tend to vary in size whereas the thumbnail images here are generally bigger.
Shanghaiist’s front page is similar to chinaSMACK’s old front page. It’s basically post-by-post reverse chornological order with “read more” links to get into the full post. Compared to the new chinaSMACK design, there’s definitely more preview text on Shanghaiist.
However, the front page in a magazine layout wasn’t meant to be reading material, it was meant to be a table of contents, where you click to the article you want to actually read.
- In “Full” Mode: Shanghaiist lets you read all posts in their entirety on the front page. However, their posts are generally much shorter than chinaSMACK’s posts so Full mode won’t work well for chinaSMACK. Also, there are duplicate content concerns with having all posts shown in their entirety on the front page or any archive pages. This is an issue for blogs. Therefore, the “excerpt” stye for botht the front and archive pages for chinaSMACK are a good thing from an SEO perspective.
5. You’re right about them hiding away “Top Users” into a separate page, but I think chinaSMACK WANTS to show off its users or visitors, maybe give itself a more “community” feel like Peteryang says.
6. I really like Shanghaiist’s Featured/Latest Posts(?) bar at the top in their header, the one with thumbnails and fading overlay with the post title. I think that might be a good replacement for the old Featured Posts bar on chinaSMACK I mentioned in my comments below. It would be good for converting search visitors, maybe even break up the massive bar of pink at the top (though I reckon that’s an intentional design element).
7. Shanghaiist is narrower than chinaSMACK. Instead of having one large rectangle ad above the fold and two skyscraper ads peeking out like chinaSMACK, it has one leaderboard ad across the top (pushing the actual content further down) and one wide skyscraper ad on the left sidebar. To me, the amount and intrusiveness of the ads is not very different.
Again, I like Shanghaiist, but I don’t see much of a difference in terms of integration of content/ads personally.
Sorry, that was more than two things.
hey rick, i wouldn’t go so far as to say that the new website is “embarrassing itself in public”, which is almost what you’re trying to insinuate here. sure, you are trying to bring in your (professional) criticism, but comments such as the new website “fails horribly” or “eh..whatever” is downright negative. you even tell Fauna to fire the website designer. i believe you wouldn’t directly say to your own girlfriend/partner if she asks you what you think of her new set of hotpants, and she happens to look overweight in it (god forbid!), that she looks like a beached whale? Fauna is doing an amazing job with this website, and I for one am still coming here for all the interesting stories regardless of the layout. honestly, has the new design really bothered you THAT much? it’s still intuitive and user-friendly. good enough.
try giving some positive comments along with your constructive criticism in the future. it’s a golden rule of guanxi. it does no harm, appeases the client and makes your criticism appear more constructive rather than offensive.
New Changes: more google ads for Chinese brides!!!
@MJ
I think we all appreciate the efforts Chinasmack put into refurbishing this site, but user opinions are a MUST for web developers in which they often offer invaluable insights and critical bug reporting that couple of moderators simply cannot discover on themself. Go check out any popular sites, probably the first thing you see is a feedback button, and that’s not for PR, it is for pragmatic improvements.
I am maintaining a collaboration site within my company, whenver I modify any application I have to tell my everybody: “log in, spam it, and report even the smallest glitch you see.”
besides, it’s web 2.0 is it not?
I give it a B-
Good developments, keep up the good work !
LoL, damn, and I thought I was a critic. Geez, some of you guys need to temper that honesty with perspective, or at least tact (*cough* Rick *cough*). While you’re at it, maybe offer some constructive suggestions, improvements, or fixes to help?
1. Unless Fauna suddenly became rich, I really doubt any of this was done by “professionals” like, I dunno, Rick in China’s company. “Fails horribly?” Are you serious, man? Isn’t that kind of unduly harsh? I personally have seen A LOT more websites that actually do “fail horribly.” Wow, geez.
2. Front Page: I usually click through to the post via RSS feed or comment subscription so I don’t usually need to go to the front page. Therefore, most of the “complaints” above about the front page are moot for me personally. However, I can see the pros and cons for the front page, as it is actually the only page with a major layout change for chinaSMACK.
2. The front page has simply gone for the “magazine-layout” look. It’s basically a big Table of Contents, with pictures. It isn’t the “meat” of the site, it’s a “display” of the meat. After you scroll past the Recent Comments, it does look a bit more busy than before, but then again, that’s basically how magazine-layouts work. They’re meant to show more content in less (especially vertical) space, to give the visitor a glimpse of what’s “inside”, and also to give the feeling that there’s “a lot.” Some like “simple,” some like “fancy.” I think it works just fine but it definitely won’t offer as much text as the old version. Anyone who has ever used WordPress will know the old front page was just the More tag in action.
3. If you like the chronological post-by-post order of the old version, just subscribe to the RSS feed. No magazine layout there and you don’t even need to visit the website much less the front-page.
4. The rest of the website is more or less the same layout with the content on the left and a sidebar on the right. No big differences, except the content area is actually wider than before, and the sidebar with the ads are narrower. This means more horizontal real-estate for the actual content (with bigger pictures), which I think is nice.
5. Recent Comments: It is technically redundant on the front page, but insofar as it’s being used to highlight the conversations going on within for new visitors, I think it does a good job. Contrary to Chery, I think the length of the comment excerpts are about as long as the old one when it was on the sidebar. I also think its kinda nice that our conversations get such a prominent placing on the front page, above the rest of the content. Dare I say, it acknowledges and even flatters what us commenters bring to chinaSMACK, and it is always nice for a website to appreciate its visitors.
6. The links in the footer is a good idea and is quite popular these days on blogs for getting visitors who finish one post/comment to click over to something else. However, I’m curious if losing the Featured Posts at the top-right (replaced by ads now) will negatively affect incoming visitors from search engines. The previous setup instantly showed the incoming visitor other posts (with the all-important eye-catching thumbnail pictures), which should probably help them click over. I don’t think the less eye-catching and purely text link footer will convert as well. Might want to consider that, maybe compare your pages/visit or time on site stats with before.
7. Advertisements: By my count, there’s still 3 ads per post page: At the top of the post, bottom of the post, and on the sidebar. The other pages have increased from 1 to 3 but they’re all located in the sidebar. From a monetization standpoint, its actually better to intersperse the ads into the content. From a “cleaner and more organized” it’s fine where it is, and in a way, its rather, well, honest to keep advertisements clearly in one area.
8. Regular visitors will quickly become or usually are ad-blind anyway, and they’re never going to really like advertising because like most people, they want everything for free. Don’t listen to them too much. In my opinion, so long as the ads aren’t deceptive, pop-up, or secretly install malware on my computer, I’m perfectly fine with them. Running a website costs money and I’m certain translating Chinese to English for our enjoyment takes a lot of fucking time. If anything, I hope the new ads bring in more money so chinaSMACK can upgrade to a better hosting plan or service that can handle its traffic. Maybe MediaTemple or something.
9. The Google Friend Connect doesn’t do much right now except show off your members/visitors, which is the same thing Recent Readers does. It’s kinda pretty but yes, more eye-candy than not. Oh, and the Friend Connect spacing leaves a pretty wide empty column on the right.
10. One thing to consider is that both of these pull data from external sources, so it could affect load times and load times are important for blogs. Try Pingdom.com and testing the website load size ands speed. Under 1MB is okay, but under 500k is way better.
11. Like Peteryang, I’m curious to see what else will be done with Friend Connect later. Integrating it with the post commenting would be a good start or there might be a good WordPress plugin for doing something similar (allowing people to “join” and showing off “members”).
12. List of Things I Like:
- New comments with alternating background colors and reply function.
- Footer and Navigation Bar. Less top-level choices, nifty drop-down.
- No huge pink Tag Cloud, but I think some of the tags were cool for navigation. Maybe a smaller tag cloud? Different color?
- Functional Search.
- I also like the front page and category/archive listings too. The latter is more clean (less “clutter”) but I think the front page is fine.
Overall: I like it better than the old one but I’d test to see which of the above mentioned changes work better or worse than before. Keep in mind that the commenters here are only a small subset of the total visitors, and many people just don’t bother commenting whether they like something or not. Therefore, its impossible to know if there’s an overwhelming consensus that people that like or dislike the new design. Don’t let a few naysayers ruin your day.
Also, people are usually resistant to change so give it some time to see if it grows on people. For example, I know quite a few people like myself who felt the pink was kinda jarring, but people get used to it.
I don’t like new design. As Kai said, it is “magazine” look. If chinaSmack will made move to become magazine, this is a good step. But, this is a blog. People expects that blogs should looks like blogs. Recent comments are bad. Bottom links are good.
Too much ads is not good for you nor advertisers, nor viewers.
Maybe I am sentimental, but I liked old design more.
On other hand, every change is good. I’m sure that next iteration of this design will be better.
LoL, don’t become a magazine. Print media is dying out. Like I said before, I think RSS readers will serve those who prefer the blog layout. The front page really should be designed with the new visitor in mind, focusing on how to draw them in and convert them into a reader. The regulars should be on RSS or they’ll quickly figure out how to glance at the front page to see what’s new before clicking through to the post (which was the same mechanic as the previous design).
Recent Comments is iffy. It all depends on how important the comments are to the website. If a big draw of chinaSMACK is the commenter community, then I think it having a prominent placement makes sense. If it isn’t, then sure, it can be relegated to the bottom. Keep in mind, that Recent Comments box is only on the front page. Everywhere else, it is in the footer. I think an argument can be made for having it repeated in the sidebar though.
Yeah… Like others above, I don’t think this new design better than the old one. Maybe it’s my firefox, but the most important part of this website, the “pictures and videos” and “stories” section is about the size of the useless member and recent reader box. I don’t mind the ads so much, because my adblockplus blocks all of them. But once I turned it off, the most important section gets even more trivialized. To me the right side looks completely empty, below the member box, while the stories section is squished, with each post taking as much space as a recent comment. This will not be friendly to new user at all (if that’s what is intended with the change), when they need to scroll down a page before they see any content.
Listen to Rick’s and also USCTer’s advice, at least for the next design, if this one can’t be changed.
Although I do really like the nicely organized bottom links and the structured comment reply system…
Also, if you ask me, there is really no need for the division between stories and pictures/videos. Just my 2 cents.
By the way, this post disappeared from the front page at the time I am posting. Guess it didn’t qualify for neither stories nor pictures/videos. The only way to access it from the front page is the recent posts link at the bottom.
New design is not bad at all. I don’t like the photos on the left, it should on the right. Because thats the “RIGHT” way. That is my personal preference.
I like the comments having 2 shades of colours to show the comments more visibly.
I think it’s great that you’re interested in improving the design of your site. I suggest that future design updates use A/B testing before being rolled out. Google Analytics provides free A/B testing options.
As for the design. I visit ChinaSmack to read about news events in China, not to read the comments. The “What is ChinaSmack” page states:
“I decided to make this website and share a ’slice of Chinese life’ with English-speaking foreigners. I will collect and repost all of the hot, popular, interesting, outrageous, and shocking things that I see on the Chinese-language internet so foreigners can understand, experience, and enjoy also.”
I think the goal is admirable, but is becoming diluted with your focus on visitor comments.
Thanks for creating this site for foreigners like myself.
Subscribe to the RSS feed and you can get your news without ever having to visit the website, much less the front page. With RSS, about the only reason to visit the website is to comment.
That said, chinaSMACK is still a blog and most blogs are still premised on the idea of initiating and having conversations. That’s what comments are for. There’s nothing wrong with her “focus on visitor comments” if that’s something she enjoys about her website.
In any case, I just noticed the front page’s Recent Comments box that so many people disliked has been minimized into a drop down. I think this is a good compromise. Those who visit the front page and want a quick glimpse of the latest comments can get them. Those who don’t, can just scroll down past it without it taking too much space.
I like the idea of recent comments. Putting it into a 3×3 box beneath the first post was what made it so out of place. Recent comments is related to chronological order of things – it makes simple sense to keep it in a list, ordered chronologically backwards, in one of the side panels.
I think that the visitor community and discussions within the comments is what really brings the board to life – not the posts – which, quite frankly, have gotten more banal as of late :)
The 3×3 box is still in reverse chronological order. It just goes right before going down. The new design seems intent on conserving vertical space so some stuff are placed horizontally. Some people don’t like scrolling down so much. Some do. But even on Google SERPs, people rarely scroll past the first few results.
I think most people think the new design sucks mostly because they’re used to something and anything that disrupts it just annoys them.
Hi everyone,
Thank you for your comments. I know not everyone like the new design but I hope after some time more people will become accustomed to it. Why it has been changed like this has many reasons. Of course I think it will be better for chinaSMACK. There may be some changes if they are necessary. For example, the Recent Comments was changed because of some good suggestion. There will also be some new things soon too that I hope will make the website better and more easy to use for visitors and readers.
Thank everyone for your understanding, patience, and support.
Also thank Tom2, Peteryang, Joe, Tom2, MJ, Hello Kitty webindex, fireworks, Shanghai Steve, and Kai (回复长度超牛), for your compliment.
There have been a few changes today.
Home Page:
Featured Posts changed to show newest 6 posts.
Sidebar:
Recent Readers removed.
Google Friend Connect moved.
Please let me know what you think. Thank you.
I dig the new slideshow thingy, on both locations. It’s a good replacement for the old Featured Posts section that used to be on the top of the right sidebar and should help with enticing visitors to click to another page of the website, thereby improving both engagement and pageviews. However, that’s not for certain. It might be so slick it gets accidentally ignored as an advertisement so check your stats to test.
The Performancing Ads region at the bottom of the sidebar looks a bit messy with the two columns (Friend Connect and the t-shirt ad) above it. I think it looked better before with the MyBlogLog Recent Readers widget above it, but I understand how it may be redundant with the GFC. Plus, Rick didn’t like it. ;) Anyway, I think you might need a horizontal “bookend” (shit, this is hard to explain) to help clean up that little corner, something that straddles both columns of the sidebar like the medium rectangle ad at the top. It looks messy because of the dissonant vertical lines, and because the oddnews.org advertisement has blending white space.
I think Rick mentioned that it’d be good to have recent comments or links to recent posts on the sidebar as well. It may be redundant with the footer but not every visitor may scroll to the bottom especially on the longer post pages, so you want to make it convenient for them to convert to another page on the sidebar.
One last thing, your WP-SpamFree tends to give a lot of false positives. After losing a comment or two, I’ve gotten into the habit of copying my comment before pressing submit just in case it gets lost. That way, I can come back, reload the page, and try again. Anyway, not sure what you can do about that though since blog spam is a big problem and most people hate captcha.