One of the things web designers like are brightly colored, drop-shadow sidebars that match the content height on evey web page. Because content height depends on the content and sidebar height depends on the number and size of the widgets in the sidebar, it takes a bit of dynamic thinking. You need to know two things: (1) How high is the content and (2) what's the current size of the sidebar? Given that, the forehead slapping moment comes from finding that one can reset the CSS for an element on the fly using JavaScript.
How do you get snappy performance for a blog when you’re not spending very much on hosting? How much hardware can your hosting provider throw at your blog when you’re paying $5 to $6 per month?
If you're running a site with W3 Total Cache (W3TC), the Thesis theme, and Wordpress 3.3, beware. Clicking the "Big Ass Save Button" once to save your Thesis options will corrupt all your Thesis settings. If you're using this combination, go to your site's dashboard and, on the General Settings panel for W3TC, disable Object Caching. Word is that this will be addressed in the next version of Thesis.