Aesthetically, is the sidebar more pleasing on the Left or Right ? Personally I prefer the sidebar on the left. Also the overall colors and layout need a critique. The links are not live, so you will not be able to navigate from the page. Thanks, Mike
I also think its better on the left side. I like the colors, they are soft and go well together, although I think you should make the text on the yellow background, as the gray right now might be hard for some people to see. Other than that, it looks great!
Good Catch. I have darkened the text and is definitely easier to read. I use a wide screen laptop display so the opinions of PC and Mac users with CRTs are also important
Aesthetically, it's been proven that website visitors in general tend to look at the header first, and then the left side of the page. So, it really depends on what you want your users to see more. Some people put ads there to increase their revenue, but if that isn't your goal, then I pick the left side.
My goal is to allow visitor's to feel comfortable with my site so they stay more than 10-15 seconds. Hitting them over the head with ad's when they first click into the site will turn most people off. I want them to dig father into the site before I clobber them with ad's. The Google ad's you see have taken me awhile to try and blend them in with the page. This does allow the visitor an escape (and a couple coins in my pocket) if they want to leave.
Left is good but if the sidebar is not extended enough then a gap in the left bottom would not look that good. So i would suggest right side if the sidebar is not longer enough.
I like it on the left. it's more natural for humans to look left to right and for things to be on the left they will look there first and see menu items while if they are on the right they will not be noticed nearly as much.