I know, I know, this is shallow, but I want your feedback nonetheless. While we shouldn’t judge a book or a blog by its cover or theme we do. This is why I’d like to hear from you whether or not you prefer a minimalist look like the one we have now or something with more decor, something that might catch the eye of the googling passer-by. Compare the screen shots and if you have the time let me know in the poll (or comments) which you’d prefer of these two (or if you think they both are distasteful or if it doesn’t matter either way):
the archives near Emmaus 
I voted the latter only because the text portion seems to be a bit wider. I don’t know why, I just like wide-texted blogs. Also the background seems more aesthetically appealing.
With respect to taste, I’m tasteless – I have no preference based on this. The criteria that strikes me is whether or not the site works on mobile devices (I’m fairly mobile, and therefore end up viewing the site from Android or IOS – not all sites work equally well on mobile platforms).
The one that seemed worst to date was the one that had a very large background image. It was visually stunning, but very inefficient on mobile platforms because as you scrolled down to look at posts they had to continuously reload the background image or parts thereof – so performance was effected.
@Jeremy: Agreed.
@Andrew: Indeed, this is an older theme so its mobile version won’t be acceptable. There is an option to differentiate the regular web appearance from the mobile appearance, so if we switch we’d have to do that.
I like the minimalist approach. Once blogs/etc try to get too pretty it becomes harder to resist adding fluffy features.
While only a handful more voted in favor of the simple design I think you’re right in gist: pretty blogs can become too distracting. For now I will be sticking with the minimal look.