@stanrobinson Use that other column for all your plugins and widgets, like posting your Twitter feed or showing your past columns, or displaying the Turkish exchange rate, or whatever strikes your fancy.

Erik and Rogier – thanks for your insights, they are very helpful. It is good to know that white space is not necessarily bad.  @erikdeckers @rogiernoort

@stanrobinson I like to use the side bar for testimonials. That way I can have a different testimonial of each page.

@stanrobinson In my sidebar (to the right of my page / post content) I use separate text widgets to give a short summary of what the site is about, subscription options (RSS, Twitter, Facebook, mailing list opt-in, etc.), a list of categories, recent posts, advertisements, and so forth. I’ve seen some sites with tons of stuff in the sidebar (which can sometimes be distracting users from your content) and others with minimal information so you have nothing to focus on but the content. Ari Herzog is a good example (http://ariherzog.com/) of someone who goes with minimalism to get readers to focus on content of sign up for his mailing list.