If you have no knowledge of php and want to learn, I'd suggest learning mediawiki mark-up, it is confusing making the transition, as I have found myself, but making the transition to Mediawiki has been less steep than I'd expected.
I started with the Font-Awesome extension, which is pretty basic and looking at it now, I'm almost embarressed to have my name to it lol It works I know but requires too many edits to the vector skin, when I'm were I want to be my skin and its accompanying extension I'll look at those css extensions again so that no core edits are required.
Maybe download that extension and look at how it works, or modify it for something you want to make yourself, just as a learning process.
Download xampp and install on your pc, to test and evaluate your code. If an old git like me can learn I'm sure you'll find it very easy :) Can email me via this wiki if you need any help.
Cheers, Lee