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Yes, please. I did find a couple of themes that have a menu option under Appearance>Editor but, yes, most of the block themes do not have that. I’m picking a block theme because I never did anything Website before and all the WordPress literature recommended it. I can’t look back and compare the block methods to the classic ways; it’s all new to me and I can’t even imagine what the classic editing was like, and don’t even want to.

But, can you please help me understand why the items listed under Admin Panel>Appearance>Editor>Pages are not pages? The ones named Blog Home, Privacy Policy, Search Results and Page: 404 all came with the theme, and I swear they all used to show up in the header. To prove it I created a whole new site called demo.dixonsforum.com and lo and behold, the header has nothing but the “cannot retrieve pages” error, fresh out of the box.

I might think my mind is playing tricks on me, except for the fact that the other items listed in practice.dixonsforum.com Admin Panel>Appearance>Editor>Pages, called Posts, Static Page, Test Page, and (No Title) were in fact created by me just like the one called Static Page, yet they do not show up in the header either, nor in the List View under Header>Group>Columns>Column>Navigation>Page List, like Static Page does.

It appears to me, in my newbieness, that some switch or setting has gotten flipped, somehow hiding the Theme-provided Blog Home, Privacy Policy, Search Results and Page: 404, as well as the user-created Posts, Test Page, and No Title, from the Navigation or Page List blocks, while the most recently user-created Static Page to be not hidden. Why else would Test Page, Posts, and (No Title) be invisible but Static Page is not?

Another relevant tidbit is that the listing under Admin Panel>Pages>All Pages includes all of the user-created pages, but only one of the theme-provided pages: Privacy Policy. Why does this list not include Blog Home, Search Results, and Page 404?

Is there a way to manually insert Blog Home, Privacy Policy, Search Results, Page 404, Posts, Test Page, and (No Title) into the Page List widget in the Header, or some preference or setting to make them visible? Thanks.

Oh, wow, the error messages from my attempts to include the screenshots did not show up on the posts! Now I don’t remember what they said. ??

Apparently, I can’t send a screenshot. Many apologies. The Navigation Function I guess is a Navigation Block. If I go to Appearance>Editor, the left sidebar goes to a menu called Design. The items in the list are: Navigation, Styles, Pages, Templates, and Patterns. Under Pages there are the canned pages provided by the Theme, and a couple of test pages created by me. Under Navigation is a widget block called “Page List.” In the Header, there ought to be a menu of page names to click upon but instead there is the error message, “Page List: cannot retrieve pages.”

It used to work just fine, but with all the mistakes I made trying to understand WordPress, I thought it would be better to just start over. I deleted the subdomain practice.dixonsforum.com from my hosting service, then re-created it to start fresh. But now, fresh “out of the box” this Page List block can’t find and list the pages.

I have cleared the cache of temporary internet files, and looked at the cookies. WordPress has dozens of cookies, maybe hundreds, on my computer. Parent cookies, child cookies, grandchild cookies. I was scared to delete any without more information, like, which cookie(s) might be confusing the new fresh though second practice.dixonsforum.com site?

The same thing happened with blog.dixonsforum.com, so I assume the solution for one will be the same for the other. I have taken them out of maintenance mode so you (George Appiah) can check them over for me, but will want them back under maintenance mode as soon as you’re done. I will meanwhile follow your (mdshak’s) guidance at creating a new page list menu.

Thank you both for your prompt, kind attentions.

The question was, please, how do I use a default template on a new page? What good are the default templates if they can’t be used on a new page?

Not much help there. Apparently I can’t create a new page off any template I want. I’d like to create a new Archives page with the All Archives template, but the new pages are automatically assigned to the Pages template, and the choices offered in the templates Swap button do not include the archives template. So how does a person create an archives page?

There was some vague advice about having to create a custom template to apply to any page, but that opens up a whole new can of worms. Is it really true that WordPress default templates can’t be applied to new pages?

If I start a new page, and then click Swap Templates, it only gives me a couple of template options to swap to. The new templates I have created are not included. How do I apply a new template to an existing page?

Wow, I just discovered there are TWO pages listings, one in the Admin Panel, and one in the Site Editor. The listing in the site editor contains the missing homepage BlogHome, so that mystery is solved. Also the list views are different depending which way I open the page. If I click Edit under the page name in the Admin Panel, list view does not contain any Featured Image or Content Block, nor does the canvas include blank blocks like Featured Image and others. But if I select the same page name from the Pages listing under Appearance> Site Editor, the list view contains the Featured Image and Content Block, and they do appear on the canvas.

All the practice blocks, one Image and three blank Paragraphs, that I stuck on the page are shown either way I open the page for editing, but when I open it from the Admin Panel they are just right beneath the Header, and are not nested in List View, but when I open the page from within the Site Editor they are nested within the content block.

Who knew? I will poke around with this tomorrow and see what I can do. It would be really helpful to know how to copy a template. I’m a little averse to editing originals. Thanks again.

Let’s forget the sidebar thing; I am obviously not communicating well. I am getting closer to understanding. The list view in WordPress is similar to the one in 3-D modeling, so I finally get the concept, it’s just a matter of finding out the details. There is apparently no provision for having an image behave like wallpaper, and just sit behind the content text. But I can forget the frills for now and focus on functionality.

I could not find any way to copy a template. I tried creating a new blank template, then Copy All Blocks from an existing template, but could not find the way to paste them into the new template. I can put a block on a new blank template now, but still can’t fathom why my site preview shows all those things like the building images, and blog posts and testimonials and all that. When I go my listing of pages, there are only three pages: (no title), New Title, and Privacy Policy (a draft.) There is no home page listed, and none of the listed pages use the “Page with Wide Image” template. You say the stuff on my screen is part of the theme, but if that template is not applied to any pages, how does it show up on page preview?

And, why does my new template not show up in the dropdown when I want to change templates on a page? And, why does my New Page look nothing like my New Page Template?

And, if I have a paragraph block in the template, why can’t I type content into it on the page? And, do I add blocks to the page or the template? I guess I’m still more lost than I thought. I don’t even know why this post decided to break the words instead of placing the line feeds at spaces like all the other ones. All I did was start typing normally, click over to another tab to check which template was on a page, and click back here to finish the post.

I did not find that video tutorial very helpful. It said a lot of things I could do, but not actually how to do them, and none of them seemed relevant to things I really do want to learn how to do. However, I value your experience and expertise and am grateful for your time and kind attention. Thank you for your help and insight.

But one thing that’s got me completely and totally mixed up is, when I view my site (theme twentytwenty4our), there’s a picture of some building, and resources and testimonials and posts, all kinds of stuff. But when I go to my Pages list, there’s only Privacy Policy that came with it, and the two pages I created, which never show up in the site preview. It’s like I’m looking at two different things and can’t do anything in either one. Can you enlighten me?

Thank you again. Our conversation has taken a turn awry, I never said I want a sidebar. What happened was, as I was following the step-by-step tutorial “First Steps with WordPress Block Editor” after where I put some test posts in categories, the tutorial said to view the site and asked, “Do you see the categories listed in the sidebar now? Great. If you are missing a category, that usually means that there are no posts in it.” (I tried to insert a quote block in here, but, I still don’t get it.) but my site did not have the sidebar. So the question was not about how to make a sidebar. It was about why, even when I follow the tutorial step-by-step, why does the sidebar not show up? I wonder what other things aren’t working right.

So I tried other themes, none had sidebar. I got several block themes to try, and none of them behaved as in the tutorial. Even though I have several posts in three different categories, none of the themes activated the sidebar feature.

I had read that logo block article before, and couldn’t work it, but I stumbled upon the Upload button today. It was off-screen, near the footer, whereas the article shows it right next to the Logo Block. But I am still unable to move it where I want it to go.

I have just discovered how to look at the templates, but do not yet know how to apply them, nor how to tell which template is active, nor how to resize the images. However I see the Page with Sidebar template, so the Mystery of the Invisible Sidebar is solved.

I will read up on templates and images. What confuses me so is, I added an image to a new page and could resize it by the side and bottom handles. But moving it around, no. Then later, when I uploaded my site logo. the image I had already on the page grew so big it went off-screen, and the resize handles were no longer available. All I could do was delete it.

I really look forward to learning how to do all this even though I get lost so easily in the tutorials, and really appreciate your help in direction. All I really need is a simple blog site with a different page to display each category, for now. Can you suggest a free block theme that’s good?

Thank you again, M. Huff. I have read the twentytwentyfour theme documentation. But why would the step-by-step instruct people to use a theme without sidebars, to demonstrate sidebars? I don’t want to get sidetracked on the theme sidebar thing right now. Even using the same theme the step-by-step said, the sidebar it said should appear, didn’t. It doesn’t appear if I apply the twentytwentyfour theme, either, or any of the three or four other themes I applied. This tells me something more global is going on.

Plus, when I follow the tutorial for adding a site logo, my WordPress editor, again, does not behave like the tutorial describes: When I select the site logo block, no toolbar appears. Nothing. If I add in a new site logo block, no placeholder icon appears. Nothing. Selecting the site logo block, either by highlighting it in the list view or clicking on it directly, just acts like a null button. This also happens no matter what the theme.

So I’m getting more and more convinced that there is some setting(s) off, or something went haywire in my WordPress installation. Is there any way to follow up those theories?

So, I followed the step-by-step, and got to where I categorized the test posts, and go to the site to see the sidebar with the post categories. There is no sidebar. Then I added more posts in the categories, and put each post in a single category, so there are three categories with two posts each.. Still no sidebar on the site view. This is in the theme called Twenty-Twenty-Two, as in the article. How do I make that sidebar appear?

Oh, Thanks, M. Huff, I didn’t see your reply until just now. The First Steps is the document I found.

Oh! I found some more documentation that is being very helpful. Please don’t waste any time on this request. I’ll keep trying a few more days. Thanks.

I think that link thing might be practice.dixonsforum.com, but not sure. some documentation and help chats use “Website” and “domain” interchangeably, some say they’re two different things. Some use the word “page” meaning the whole site. Another site I’m working with is staging.dixonsforum.com. These are pretend pages for now; after I learn the basics I will build the actual real pages? sites? I still don’t know what terminology to use.