In attempting to customize my company's SPS2003 intranet (I refuse to call it my SPS because it's getting increasingly hideous with every new “suggestion”), I came across a little landmine involving using other pages as templates that you might want to watch out for.  This is what I did:

I customized a page so that it looked right.  Then, satisifed with that page design, I went to another, previously added, page and clicked “Change Settings.”  I clicked “Page” and then changed the Area Template radio button to select “this area uses the following page as a template” and pasted in the URL of the page that I'd customized.  The page changes to look exactly like the page I'd customized, which was fine.

Both pages were basically just containers for the Page Viewer Web Part (more on this later, maybe tonight).  I opened the properties of the Page Viewer and changed the URL that it was viewing and I thought I was done.  My new page was now perfect.  I went back to the old page later and lo and behold, it had changed to use the new URL in the Page Viewer.  I changed it back, which changed the new page as well.  The pages were mirror images of each other.

Moral of the story, “use the following page as a template” actually means “this page is a reflection of the following page, and changes to one make changes to the other”.  If I ever write an SPS book, I'm putting the Cheshire Cat on the cover.  Curiouser and curiouser ...

Also, changes to txtlstvw.aspx don't seem to show up on the site.  I modified the HTML in visual studio but it didn't make any changes to the way news and listings show up ... anyone have any clues?