I just don't get it.

Last night I ventured into Joomla land, attempting to make our page prettier with HTML. I've used HTML before and it was pretty straight forward code and the preview of the updated front page looked great. The problem came when I actually viewed the results of my wokr and found nothing has changed. For some reason, nothing was changed on the page. After going back and forth from editor to viewing the site about a dozen times, I ave up and started a new front page from a different link in the menu. Same thing. Looks great in the preview, but now there's nothing on the front page. WHEN WILL JOOMLA RETURN ALL OF THESE HOURS IT IS STEALING FROM ME! I'll try again today. I'm just glad that Joomla isn't some kind of tangible item that I could smash against a wall or there would be some cleaning to do.