Starkers Theme Styling Blog

Hi
I’m building a child theme using Starkers.
If I make any changes at all to functions.php it breaks the entire site.

I’m only making small changes, and adding functions.php to my Child theme folder.

Anyone know why this is/ how I should go about styling my blog?

Thanks

PS The only thing I am really trying to do is stop the meta (date and author) below the post title from being links. If I could solve this another way I’d be happy.