Components (master pages) with “editable areas” is a description that covers too many different possibilities to be a useful topic of discussion.
i’ve seen this behavior too and it took some trial and error to figure out what was wrong.
in my case, i needed to use Components/Update the whole project in conjunction with File/Save All to make sure all my changes were propagating as expected.
Then it was a matter of defining my EDITABLE AREAS so that i’m only allowing changes to the details i want to to be different on each child page regarding that element.
if you choose [x ] Inner content, then everything about the element is ignored by the update, and you have to go to each page and make the change manually.
if you want to retain the ability to update the element but preserve certain modifications in the child pages (like page H1 header names, or current page classes), then you uncheck this box and only allow child pages to have different class names or background images, etc… everything else about the element will be updated when you update the mater page.
all of this works exactly the same with components, so really a master page is just another component.
i would not add/modify/delete any of the pg_ stuff used by PG as these can all be controlled via the ACTIONS tab.
there really needs to be a master class tutorial that covers all the ACTIONS tab features and their utility for maintaining a website. its seems like there are a lot of powerful options, but it’s not clear what they all do, or how they are used, and in what context… the little [?] boxes only seem to take me in circles in the tutorial pages.