I am trying to fix some bugs and possibly alter or create my own WordPress template. Has anyone done this using the HTML Editor? Any tips?

Thanks.

Hiya Greg,

If you don't have the editor yet, give the trial version a spin and see how it works for WP theme editing. If the files are basic web type files you should have no issues with editing them at all. The editor can edit a lot of different file types and if you have issues with it opening something that you are pretty sure it should work with, open the Preferences and navigate to the Files area to associate that file type with the program and it should then open it fine.

Let us know if you have any other questions on it

Yup! I've been playing around with WordPress themes a lot using HTML Editor. All you really need to do is create your template in HTML with the HTML Editor, then chop it up into individual PHP files, like Header.php, Footer.php, and sidebar.php

This link explains what you need to do to make your HTML template work:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development