Page template option missing

Question

I checked everything suggested in that response: "page attributes" option is checked, template file is located at theme root folder, I tried several file encoding options in my text editor (UTF8 with or without BOM), I tried switching to another theme then back to my custom theme, I do have the right stuff on top:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Page Actualites
*/
?>

Why am I still not seeing the page template dropdown list?

Answer 1

The page was set as the posts page in settings > reading, which prevents from chosing a specific page template since this setting automatically assigns index.php as the page template for that page.

Answer 2

The documentation of the feature is really good. So check them, especially the name of the file, also the rights of the file via FTP or ssh - is it readable.

Do not use page- as a prefix, as WordPress will interpret the file as a specialized template, meant to apply to only one page on your site.

Remove also the PHP close tag, not necessary and often more problematic.