Why can’t i select the page templates for pages on WP 2.0

It is there – on the right of the text input area:
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Page Parent…

But it works as earlier: if you don’t have more than 1 Page templates it doesn’t display. If the active theme doesn’t have a Page template or has only the default page.php – you will not see it.
Switching to a theme that has more than 1 (one) Page Template – you’ll see the option to select a template.

thanks dude..ill try it and see

Yup…its work moshu!thanks for the help!..btw do you know a way i can get the number of posts for a specific category? say i have two categories and in one of the template i have to rewrite it to display the two cats. with their latet number of posts?

I am not sure I understand the question, sorry.
Maybe if try to re-phrase it, please.

hmm..Say when the user click on a link which is linked directly to a seperate php page..the page will use a custom made side bar made by me… the side bar will “only” contain two categories.not all the categories…and each category should give its name and num of posts..the page will act as a middle man..
what is the code to address each category.
e.g say i have a cat. called “papers”
without having the wordpress to call out all the cats in the db how can i address “papers” and someother cat..

1. What is that “separate php page”? Is it a Page created by WP or is it a physical PHP file outside WP?
2. You can have customized sidebars for different templates. E.g. something like sidebar1.php that will be called only for a certain Page template. In this case you will have to replace the standard call “get_sidebar” in the Page template with an include:
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar1.php'); ?>
What appears in this new, custom sidebar depend on what template tags will be used in it.
For categories you go to the Codex and diligently study all the Category related template tags with their parameters and usage examples:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags#Category_tags

well..it will be a physical php file..basically a copy of the main php index but modified so it gets only the categories i want..

thanks a lot for the support..ill do the sites and see what i can do.. basically now im a bit confused as well..hope it will work

it will be a physical php file..basically a copy of the main php index but modified so it gets only the categories i want..

I am confused, too ??
When you say categories, is it in the sidebar or posts in certain categoires?
Is this file living outside of WP? It is still not clear what exactly do you want to achieve ??

I will rethink what my requirement is and make a post..hang on .. haha its so funny..confused on 31st December!

ok i thought about it before i sleep..well i have this section of the website which is totally seperate from the main categories… this section has its own subcategories..so what i want is basically to show up the latest stuff posted under those sub.cats. when you click on the link for it. e.g. assume the link from the homepage is called “e-library” when i click that the page that comes should contain the latest posts done by the subcategories of that section other than showing the latest posts from other cats of the website.. do you get what i mean..so if my brain works right..if i make replica of the index.php and name it differently and customise it i should be able to make the change rite…?

I think I am getting it now… or at least getting closer ??
It seems you are over-complicating it, like this dude:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/53980?replies=5

I think the solution for what you want is very similar to that: you just have to figure out the Loop for that cat-template to show what you want. It’s not that difficult, there are a lot of examples in the Codex and around here in the forum.