Unless you're reading this post by RSS, you should be looking at my new site design, which I spent the past week working on. My design skills aren't that great, but I'm hoping it's an improvement over the old design. One of my main objectives was to emphasize that the site isn't just a blog and forum, but also has a large archive of info about hoaxes throughout history. Which is why I put the new archive links front and center.
One feature you may not notice immediately: when you load the site you'll currently see either a pair of jackalopes or nessie to the right of the main banner. I've set it up so that random images will load in this place -- and clicking on the images will take you to the article about whatever hoax they represent. I just need to make some more images to add into the random rotation.
Comments
Since the only thing there is the small banner for the MoH sister site, I suggest placing that somewhere else, so that the top of the screen coincides with the top of the Museum of Hoaxes banner. This reduces the vertical with by 50%.
The ads are definitely the hardest element to design around. They're big and ugly. I can't just tuck them out of the way somewhere, because that would defeat their purpose. But on the other hand, they allow the site to exist.
I noted you did something meanwhile, because the banner now is now taking sligthly less vertical space.