I've just been seeing them around a lot lately and I like the look of them but my knowledge of coding limits me sometimes on the complexity of sidebars >.<;

I have a marquee looking thing at the top of my board and I feel (slightly) that it's out of date (because everyone is using sidebars).

So the question is, does having a sidebar make a site more appealing? Or is just a place to organize links enough? I think I know enough about coding to get by if having a sidebar is the thing to be, however I rather like my current layout

(And yes, I am aware that I should do whatever makes me happy but I'd like to know what you other admin's think!)

Should I keep my current marquee at the top of my bored or does a sidebar allow for more organization of the sites resources?

Ideas? Comments? Random Peptalks? ;)

I love having the sidebar because that means that important info is always readily available, also when I look at a site with a sidebar, I can find things easily. It looks pretty.

However, I'm not going to ignore sites without them, as long as they are organized and looking active.

Basically, sidebars are nice, but not required for me.

In my opinion, anything that organizes links into an easy-to-find manner makes the site more appealing to me. When I come upon a site, I want to be able to find the important information quickly, and having some type of welcome table or sidebar generally helps the most.

So yes, I'd say sidebars do make a site more appealing to me in that sense. But, depending on what you have at the top of you board, sometimes that can work just as well, if the information is all there.

I need to track down a link to your board :)

And don't let the coding scare you. I'm new to coding, and just made my first site a few weeks ago. Even someone as new to it as I am was able to figure out the sidebars with a nice, clearly explained code.

I don't have one posted yet >.< but if you'd like it I can send it to you via PM!

I greatly prefer sidebars for the main reason stated above- organization. They allow you to provide a lot of information and quick links in a tiny amount of space. Also, storing a Cbox in a sidebar is very beneficial. Not only do you get quick and easy communication, but you also don't have to scroll to the bottom of every page or push down the forums to get it. If you require multiple accounts, a quick login forum in the sidebar is also really helpful. Also, I really do think that sidebars are more attractive to most potential new members.

I am no HTML expert, but I've been able to maintain my sidebar well. Sometimes I fudge it up when editting, but it only takes a couple of tries to get things right. Just make sure that you can return to the original code in case you really mess up when editting. A good way to figure out how to add something to your sidebar is to view the source (coding) of a site that has the feature that you'd like to add. That allows you to see exactly what coding works, and then you can edit it from there.