Do I need to change the setting for the Daily theme then so that it is no longer active network wide?
Yes. You dont’ want other people’s blogs looking like your main one!
All I am trying to do at present is set the site up so that it looks like the daily theme -at the moment it looks like nothing at all.
it’s gonna look pretty boring until you get some content in there and add custom text/logos/images/colors via the theme options.