When it comes to the forum layout I personally hate the side bars. Unfortunately some of that information is needed especially the custom items I created. In my recent redesign of my website I restyled my forums and added the sidebar content I wanted into the bottom of the page. The look is sooo much cleaner! I manually added select island's code to the footer but perhaps a layout option to place stuff there from the control panel would be nice.
widgetized header / footer like you did with your footer would be very nice
