Are there any limitations in regards to the free development version of Kentico and custom filters?

I do not currently have access to the file structure of my clients website as it is hosted elsewhere. We have the free development version of Kentico in house which is where I am doing some preliminary setup/development while I wait for access.

I am attempting to create various filters for News/Press Releases. In all instances, when I create a custom control, following the instructions provided here and in Karol's blog I cannot get my custom control to display. Everything else seems to be in place per the examples but the filter itself does not seem to be working.

No filter(dropdown), no data, and most importantly, no errors. I would really like to work on more complex filtering but that is kind of difficult when I can't even get the basic example to work.

This is the article I have referenced:

http://devnet.kentico.com/Knowledge-Base/Web-parts-Controls/Custom-filter-for-data-source-web-parts.aspx

And this is the path I am using.

~/CMSWebParts/Filters/CategoryFilter.ascx

Any suggestions?