Master DNS in SOA not found?

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

D> Making changes to the file seems to have no effect as far as the
D> domain check reports go. 

What made you think that it would ?  The DNS data for your domain are
published to the world by content DNS servers owned and run by a DNS hosting
company (ThePlanet) that you are paying to do this.  Why do you think that
changing the DNS database content on your own entirely separate content DNS
server will have any effect at all on what data the rest of Internet
(including the organizations that provide the free DNS checking services that
you are using) sees ?