Can't find drop-down "Parent" menu

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  ourphilosophia · Member · Nov 21, 2011 at 4:20 am

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  Hi. I can’t find the drop-down “Parent” menu on “Add Pages.” I’m using the free version of WordPress and taking an online course on it, but the instructor can’t think of a reason the parent menu disappeared. I can’t go forward in the class until I can get it back! We didn’t create a custom menu for the class, so I just need the normal “Parent” menu that was there before.

  Thanks for any help you can give me on this!
  Blog url: http://petstogo2now.wordpress.com/

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  staff-blorbo · Staff · Nov 21, 2011 at 10:12 am

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  You don’t have any pages published on your blog. You won’t be able to assign a Parent page until you publish at least one page.

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  ourphilosophia · Member · Nov 21, 2011 at 4:44 pm

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  Thanks so much for your response.

  I had seven or eight published pages when I lost the drop-down menu and then, after I contacted Support, I sent them to the Trash folder in an effort to start over. I’d tried changing browsers, which didn’t help; I’d tried changing themes, and in one of those themes (but not the others), the drop-down menu reappeared after I’d added some new pages, but then it disappeared again.

  Can code be corrupted in WordPress during normal use? If so, can you tell me a few of the factors that might cause this? I don’t yet know enough CSS code to trust myself to try to change the code.

  Again, thanks.

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  designsimply · Member · Nov 21, 2011 at 6:16 pm

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  You won’t see the parent option until you see a number next to Pages on your main dashboard page here: https://petstogo2now.wordpress.com/wp-admin/

  Note that posts marked as private cannot be set as a parent page, the posts must be public. If you want to make your entire blog private while you work on it, try setting that option on the Settings → Privacy page and then make the pages public when you publish them.

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  ourphilosophia · Member · Nov 21, 2011 at 6:34 pm

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  Oh, jeez-Louise! That makes so much sense. I’d asked the instructor whether setting the pages as private would make a difference, but I don’t know that he saw that part of the question. When I get home I’ll try setting the privacy feature the way you advise.

  Many thanks for your reply!

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  ourphilosophia · Member · Nov 22, 2011 at 2:02 pm

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  It worked! I followed your advice and the drop-down menu reappeared.

  Thank you so much. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out the solution to this problem, and you saved me from wasting any more!