After much trial and error, I finally got it working. Here is my best guess at to what's happening:
- the WebDirect process is responsible for saving the XML file
- however, the WebDirect process gets the data from the Database Server
- however, the Database server seems to cache the data from the XML file, and doesn't notice changes to the XML file
What I found to work was these steps:
- turn off Web Publishing Engine (WPE -- not sure if this matters?) and WebDirect.
- Stop database server
- make edits to the XML file
- start database server, then start WebDirect and WPE
If the changes don't "stick" repeat the steps, but this time change the customhomeurl value to something different (this seems to be necessary to get one of these processes to notice the change. Then repeat the steps, changing it back.
What a terrible UI/UX...