Changes I'm making aren't publishing…

I have just recently created my wordpress website. It is being hosted by hostgator…and I’m using the responsive theme.
I don’t understand why, but some things I change in the dashboard don’t take effect and I have surely pressed save.
On Sunday I tried to rearrange the header pages out of alphabetical order and it simply wouldn’t do it. I even made a custom menu. This morning I made a second custom menu and finally it did.
On the widget dashboard I have search and categories on my sidebar but the categories widget doesn’t show in the welcome or about pages, but it does in the others…I also have Text boxes in the 3 home widgets spots but they don’t show up on the site.
I’m new to all this stuff and I’ve been following tutorials and doing things exactly as they do but some things work and others don’t. Another example is that I have created 4 categories, but when you click the drop down menu, it only shows the first I published…so only one post is viewable.
If you can offer any explanation and help..I’m really eager to get the site up and running.
Thank you