blakeleyk

Thanks for the response! It is slowly starting to make sense.

The website that I am redesigning has already been on WordPress, and it already has a theme.

I think the header and footer are great, so the only changes I will make to those sections will be a hamburger menu on mobile for the header. There are also a number of pages that do not need to be redesigned.

However, what is changing is the design of the body of a few pages. I am thinking a child theme will be the best option for this, as the design is moving from columns to rows and things will move around a good bit, but I would like for the person taking over the site later to be able to revert it back if necessary.

The issues I am running into now are:

1) I have successfully found where to edit, change, and add content. However, the redesign requires that I change the order of content on a page. For example, old site has a ul at the bottom of the page, underneath an image. With the redesign, the ul will be split into two ul’s, with half going above the image. Is it possible to change the order of content on each page only in the child theme? I would want the original theme to look exactly the same as it has been. (Also, I would want to be able to change it back in case changing the order of content hurts SEO)

2) The id’s and class’s are going to completely change. Should I just add in the new id’s and classes and leave the old ones for the parent theme, or should I just change the ids and classes for the new child theme? Also, will there be a separate style.css file for the child theme, or do I add it to the style.css currently being used?

3) Finally, is there a way to do all of this in wordpress while keeping the current site live? Particularly, if I have to change the content for each page?