1. Put the filters in a sidebar
You can put the filters in a sidebar, no matter which filter module you are using. One important thing is to disable the Smarty cache setting for the sidebar.
2. Got an error when I try to edit the category description in the editor.
Got an error saying "Sorry, the content area was not found". The reason is that you didn't add the Category description widget to the category page template. The solution is to add the Category description to the category page template, and then try again.