SharePoint 2010 Security Trimmed Controls on master pages not actually being trimmed

Question

I'm working with v.4 SP1 and trying to trim some controls from the master pages of a site collection. Specifically the "Site Actions" menu (that's the most important one) and the social tags (less important), as well as trying to clean up the tree view navigation (I understand this may require a completely separate fix involving JS but I thought I would ask just in case security trimming can do the job).<---Update: Solved this by switching to flyout menus.

I've found lots of what seems to be very clear evidence online that this should be easy to do, just find the specific control in the default.master and v4.master and wrap it with the security trim like this (using "Site Actions" menu as an example):

<Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl runat="server" PermissionsString="ManageWeb">
    <SharePoint:SiteActions id="SiteActionsMenuMain" runat="server">
        ...
    </SharePoint:SiteActions>
</Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

So I do that, save it, publish and approve the page as a major version, and go to take a look on the site with a "contribute" or "read" account (that should be trimmed by ManageWeb). But absolutely nothing is trimmed. I've tried using different PermissionsString variables, tried doing it to different controls, even tried doing it to specific menu items within "Site Actions" but nothing ever changes on the site.

I feel like there's something very basic that I'm leaving out or not taking into consideration. Can anyone give me a face-palm solution? Or at least point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

Update: I've run into situations where changes made to the tree view delegate control of a site not based on the blank template don't take effect because, as Microsoft explains it, at runtime the server ignores the control and overrides it with a different one, and their solution to this is to change the ControlId to make it look at the one you want. Could it be a feature similar to this that's preventing the SPSecurityTrimmedControl wrap from being published at runtime?

The Microsoft article is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2558891

Answer 1

A few possibilities come to mind :

1. Are you sure that the site is using the exact same master page you are modifying? It sounds obvious but it is an easy mistake to make.
2. Does your site have Output Caching enabled? If so, it is conceivable that you could be looking at a cached copy of the page when you are testing the change

Answer 2

Closing this question down - I've managed to work around the issue.

Instead of trying to customize the master page I've created a more complicated security structure, "partitioning" some users off to a different page that is locked down so the problematic controls aren't even available. Not a perfect solution, but it does the job.

However if someone stumbles across this and happens to know the direct answer, please feel free to add it, because it would still be useful to me (and maybe others!) in the future.