[Andrew]

Moving the sidebar into the header and footer would be quite an intensive process really, which I can't easily explain here in a post. You'd basically have to move the table that contains all that info from the FORUMHOME template into the header and footer templates. I'm also not sure if the statistics portion will work on any page besides the forum homepage, so even if you move it, that section might only work on certain pages unless you're able to right a plugin that can pull the information you need on every page. If I wasn't swamped with school and work right now, I'd be more than happy to help, but I doubt I will have any free time until the term ends in December.

As for the ads in that column, you'd just have to copy and paste one of the tables that's in the FORUMHOME template below itself and just change the title of it and the HTML content.