Correct way to create sidebars?

The 'automatic' sidebar creation in Montezuma is great, but is there a 'right' way to do it consistantly? I'm using a lot of physical templates and they don't seem to automatically create the sidebars they need.

I'm currently getting around the challenge by 'creating' them in one of the virtual comments subtemplates, which I'm not actually using. Works fine, but if there's a 'proper' way, I should probably be doing that!

[If there isn't, could I suggest that my 'hack' would seem to be easy to incorporate as a 'proper' feature at a later date?]