Revised layout
Okay, I've made some tweaks to the layout of this journal's front page; stop by the new layout and let me know if it looks bad. The idea is to have the look-at-a-date and search forms be to the left of the latest-comments sidebar, rather than below it, which lets the latest-comments sidebar be taller.
I'm still not entirely satisfied with what the latest-comments sidebar shows; I get enough comments that most of the time it'll show only comments on entries that are still on the front page (though it comes in handy if someone posts a comment to an old entry). But the other approach I'd considered—listing the entries that've received the latest comments, so multiple comments on a given entry would be collapsed into one sidebar item—is a slower and more complicated database query, and wasn't popular among the people I asked about it, and wouldn't have a way to show names of people who'd posted. Someone suggested that I could show latest comments that aren't showing on the front page; I'm kinda resistant to that idea, but maybe it would resolve my concerns. Not sure. Maybe I should try it.
Anyway, still thinking about how best to do this. Sorry to V, Dan, and Mary Anne for not getting this working on your journals yet.