Going round in circles

Hi everyone,
I have zen cart 1.3.8 and have been going round and round in circles through the faq`s and tutorials but the changes i am making are not taking effect.
I am completely new to customising php files so there is a big chance I am doing it wrong.
I have created the directory as follows includes/languages/custom and in there is english.php (copy) i edited this and saved in above folder it shows the changes when opened but not showing these changes on my site why? please help me......:cry:

The site in your sig is not Zen Cart, so I can't tell what you have done. Do you have a custom template created or installed? The /custom/ folder is useless without that, and you need to name the /custom/ folder to match your template name.

Aaaah, click click. This would be the sound of my brain catching up. I havent done that I am in the process of doing that now. my zen cart is installed elsewhere but it seems we may have hit the nail on the head!!!

hopefully that is all it has been.