Correct, svn commit will push your local modifications to the server. Take a look at the Basic Work Cycle to get a quick-ish overview of the commands you’ll typically use.
The “common” pattern is:
updateto merge the latest changes from the server into your working copy;- Perform whatever modifications you need to do;
updateagain to make sure you’re up to date (you can skip this and the next step will fail if you’re not up to date);committo push your changes to the server.
SVN doesn’t have a staging area; there’s just your working copy and the repository (plus your local pristine, but you only interact with that indirectly when you revert any working copy changes).
As a side note, Git and SVN have an awful set of terminology that can overlap when not expected (see revert and checkout). Check out this resource for some help with that.