It’s not that it doesn’t look good it’s just disorienting when you scroll. Like my queer eye matters though. A lot of sites are doing it, even wordpress.org, I guess I just have to get over it

I do recognize what Jason is going through, I went through the same thing, he wants to bling his blog. Something I have been struggling with for ever. But i realize now that the more “cool” stuff I add the less likely readers will see it through the clutter. And if you have noticed I have taken a lot out.

Another thing to consider is RSS. Your main readers and contributers will rarely visit so you really need to plan for the new reader and I rather have them see more content then my bling/cool/other stuff about me.

I don’t have the same strong feelings as Dan regarding the three column layout, although I do think they get a little cluttered, and can take away focus from the main content of the page. However, as you said, two column blogs (and a lot of 3 column ones for that matter) often do try to cram too much stuff into that side section.

I am guilty of that as well, and have been wanting to do a redesign in which I pull out most of what I’ve got in there now and either put it in separate pages or get rid of it. I tried to mitigate that problem initially by writing that javascript collapsing sections code, but I’d rather just clean it up a little. Now if I could only find the time to work on it.