For my Adsense ads, I used the official Adsense plugin but the plugin didn’t allow me to place ads in the sidebar.  I googled the problem and was not able to find a solution.  In order to get a rectangular ad in the sidebar, I dragged a text box into the sidebar widget area and then cut and paste my adsense code in there.  I made sure I only had two other ad units with the plugin since there is a three ad limit with adsense.  You need to check the ad placement with all your page styles (home, posts, and pages).

As soon as I set up this blog on WordPress, I was getting comment spam almost immediately.  Though the Akismet plugin was pre-installed, it seemed to be a big hassle to get a free key to enable it.  Instead I downloaded WP Simple Firewall and this seemed to be effective in fighting comment spam.