I wanted to share something I learned with the help of this wonderful and supportive WPMUDEV community.
It took me a long time to understand child themes, and why you need them, and how to do them.
Now, I understand it, it's a way to customize your theme and protect it from overrides. That includes the css, and functions.php
So recently I started using Orbisius Child Theme plugin, and it's been a huge help in understanding how to manage and care for child themes. It made it understandable for me.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/orbisius-child-theme-creator/
I just wanted to share in case it might help others. It's FREE.
There might be another, better plugin, so please let me know.
But this is a favorite so far. It both taught and helped me.
Now I can seamlessly customize my css, and functions and NOW I GET WHY YOU DO IT!!
Thanks everyone, especially Ari for all the help over the last year.
This is will be a permanent membership for me, and I have two new clients that need multisites and directories, and it's all WPMUDEV.
Mark