I am starting to feel a little defeated in trying to setup a Carter Lake.

you need to use the special file conversion, file #29
where you can set the local (eg testtags.txt )and remote (e.g testtags.php) file names
and set the times to create and times to upload

also what you are wanting to do is the Saratoga templates…which are much expanded on the original Carterlake template (which my site uses)