I’m mainly wondering where to start. I read about creating a child theme and get the file structure part. I understand that wordpress and buddypress themes are different than normal css in that they have php in them. What I am wondering is should I start by studying wordpress theme creation then create the child theme or is there another way to go? I am new to php, css and theme creation but have gathered some materials on the language and am studying the languages themselves. Just not sure where to start when it comes to creation. Also is it better to use a software like dreamweaver or a notepad software to write the code in.

I have installed ubuntu (new to linux also) lampp and have wordpress and buddypress up and running. Besides a couple dual boot issues and database issues when installing wordpress it wasn’t to hard. Now that I have my testing environment set up I want to get into theme development. Once pointed in the right direction of study I’m sure I can read up and start learning. Just not sure which spot to start at.
Thanks

[@stwc Participant 14 years, 7 months ago]

My suggestion (just because that’s the ramshackle way I go about stuff) would be to grab a free BP theme that you like (or just a copy of the bp-default theme), set it up as a child theme, grab a plugin or two that you like, and start messing around with the templates and the css to see how things fit together. I work on an XAMPP install locally for dev, and use Notepad++ and Firebug on Firefox for coding, for what it’s worth.