Ubbdev is a non vendor site.
It was created to support user modifications to the stock code that are not supported by the vendor.
As far as editing the template files.
to be clear the template files are big edits to the code.
Styles are another thing.
like here ubb uses one style while at ubbdev they use another style.
With some minor template changes.
I would get my feet wet with the stock code and get understanding on the structure before I started to blindly make changes to the code.
Remember that styles are CSS based so a lot can be done with just that.
