Column & Sidebar Layouts

Column layouts are used on a large number of websites - especially those created with Wordpress and its derivatives. These layouts tend to look scrappy and unfinished due to the large expanse of white space when the content height of the main and sidevar doesn't match.
Sidebars
The sidebar layout is the main problem as can be seen by looking at any of the gazillions of sites using the Wordpress blog layout.

Better By Design

Columns with text and images can be set up as auto columns to allow the content to flow from one to the other similar to a newspaperlayout.
Parallel columns can look OK if an effort is made to balance the content.
Sidebars
Sidebars can be improved in a couple of ways …
If the sidebar or sidebar nav has less height than the main, the sidebar can be made sticky.
When the sidebar content height is greater than the main content its height can be clamped to that of the main and any overflow will appear om vertical scroll. This shows a vertical scrollbar generated by the brwoser.
Better class designs will have an option to removet the scrollbar when viewed on desktop browsers.

CSS

Both sticky and scrolling sidebars can now be created using CSS without resirting to Javascript which makes them more suitable for responsive pages that will be viewed on mobile devices.