I have so far installed SilverStripe, and gone through the tutorials 1-5. I am happy with what it has to offer and am ready to start building my site. But first, a couple of questions:

Why is my _config.php in the tutorial folder when I thought it was supposed to be in the themes folder (which its not)?

What does the _config.php file mean by dev mode? I installed on my server as 'localhost' so am I in dev mode? How do I get out of this?

Is there anything else I should do to be all ready for the 'Developing Themes' tutorial?

Thanks

http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=debugging

Development mode is recommended while you are working on a site. If the site is on a live server then it should be running in live mode by default (as long as you dont have a Director::set_environment_type('dev'); in your config).

Developing themes is fairly entry level but I suggest you leave dev mode on so you can see error outputs etc. The first 2 tutorials as well have some more information

Thanks for that.

What does it mean that my _config.php file is not in the folder that the tutorial assumes it should be in: mysite/_config.php?

Should I create one? Should I leave the one in the tutorial folder?

No, its fine where it is, that _config file tells SilverStripe where and what code it should use. If you have no _config file in the tutorial folder then Silverstripe will not 'see' or read any of the code in that folder. If you had installed with the tutorial theme and not the blackcandy one then your _config file would have been in tutorial/ and not in mysite. Whereas if you do it the other way round (install with blackcandy) then your _config will be in mysite/ and not in tutorial.

This is so when you are working on the tutorial you can keep the code in tutorial and when you want to start working on something else you can just move the _config file to mysite/