Thanks for the kind words Eric ... everyone certainly has their opinions as is demonstrated in a thread such as this.
Personally I think this site brings out a bit more color than others I am used to seeing. There is only so much you can do to make a bulletin board stand out from the rest. Sure you can go to extremes and put in tons of color and contrasts, but a lot of times it makes it too difficult to read and keeping it simple takes over.
I do appreciate the nice comments and the criticisms as well .. and yes, a lot of hard work certainly goes into it.