Removing comments from the home page & adding social sharing to footer

Hi everyone,

I’m using Spun (love it so much, well done Caroline).

I’ve read on the forums that I need to create a Child Theme in order to modify elements of the theme. Is it better to create a Child Theme before you actually build the website, or can it be done after a portion of development has occurred?

Reason I ask is that I was trying to get away with not needing to create a Child Theme, because I’m a novice and I’m not sure how to create a Child Theme. I was hoping to solve my problems by adding a plugin to a widget, but I think the website would look better if I actually created a Child Theme.

My questions are two-fold.

1) In the WordPress.com version of Spun you can add social media icons to the footer of the theme by selecting “CONNECT” under the APPEARANCE>CUSTOMIZE option.

In the WordPress.org version of Spun the abovementioned customise option is not available.

How do I add the social media icons to the footer of WordPress.org version of Spun without needing to modify the code or create a Child Theme?

2) I’ve disabled comments on my website but there is still a plus sign on the home page denoting that there is an option to comment on the home page.

Have I done something wrong when disabling comments, as the plus sign (in theory) should not be on the home page.

How do I remove comments from the home page?

Thank you so much, in advance, for supporting me to learn WP.org

Warm regards
Merryn 🙂