Thanks. My current (non-drop down) menu uses the exclude parameter. But I would like to use a plugin — and I don’t think you can use the exclude parameter with the new php code in the header? I don’t know php so can’t fiddle with the plugin code (if there is indeed a way to filter out the pages).
The only solution I found was to create a new page, save it as unpublished, and make the pages I want to exclude be children of that unpublished page. That way they don’t appear in the menu.
