[ic] Trouble in creating a new template / region

[JT Justman]

Hi! I've been trying to study Interchange for a while, and finally gave up
trying to run it on my own server in favor of someone else's server.

But I've got a problem. I've been playing with this for the last couple
days, and looking at the archives, and havn't come up with anything...
archives had some answers, but they didn't do it.

I'm running 4.6.5. I'm trying to make a new template based on the default
'construct' one.
I copy templates/leftright to templates/sitemain, and change
ui_template_layout: to SITE_TOP, UI_CONTENT, SITE_BOTTOM
Then I copy LEFTRIGHT_TOP to SITE_TOP and LEFTRIGHT_BOTTOM to SITE_BOTTOM in
templates/regions
Change the template on the index page and save it.
When I load the page then, I see only the content that was entered in the
content box in the admin (one photo and the "Welcome to..." line).
The pages/index.html shows @_SITE_TOP_@ and @_SITE_BOTTOM_@ in the correct
places and the file looks just like it does when things are default and
everything works.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for whatever help you can offer!

JT