Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Agreed on the huge left side ad space. If you fill that thing up, I would just close the page, with-out reading anything. Big turn off for me. Although ads may be a source of income, you need to be discreet and not overwhelming with them.
As for hosting, I don`t know what Wild West gives you but GoDaddy serves the purpose for most people with small sites.
You have a forum attached though. If that forum starts getting a lot of use, you`ll start creating a lot of queries, and if there are images, videos or other attachments added, you`ll out-grow GoDaddy.
You also have no control over your php.config either with them,... I believe. Someone correct me if I`m wrong.
Personally, I use Dreamhost: http://www.dreamhost.com/ Unlimited domains, databases, email addy`s, ftp users and an almost unusable amount of disk space and bandwidth. Right now they`re offering unlimited space and bandwidth for a limited time.( See terms) I`m currently hosting 6 forum based sites and I`m not touching the bandwidth meter.
There are others though. If you don`t like the idea of a shared server, then you have to look for dedicated.
I also got an email about this host recently: http://www.thinkhost.com/
That deal looks pretty good but I haven`t dug deep into the specifics.
Otherwise, I like the site, you seem very informed and know what to pass on to possible readers.A couple links where broken when I looked but I have a feeling you`re working on the site as I type this.