CMS Made Simple Forums

With CMS MS can you have multiple content areas on one page? For example main column and side bar text?

yes

Just put this in your template:
{content block="Second Content Block"}

Note, when previewing the page only the main content block will be previewed, no secondary content blocks will be previewed.

To see more info, log into your Site Admin and go to Extensions > Tags and read all about the content tag as well as all the other tags there.

I have been using the PageblockS module for this type of work.
You can add as many editable areas as you like on each page.  Smarty tags easy to understand.

I use this on my site motivateddesign.co.uk
left {content} tag - right {cms_module module='pageblocks'} tag

Regards

Barry Cooper