Hi Maureen, I think top navigation is what you would see on most websites and certainly 99% of the sites that I review.

I think for blogs putting things such as navigation to categories is fine as many users expect this kind of stuff in the sidebar.

You can get around the long empty area by floating the menu so it stays with the user as they scroll down the page, Ive seen this used on a few blogs.

(i think it takes up a lot of real estate. Plus there’s the issue of long empty area…

SEP uses right side.