It should be noted that going forward, the theme team will be making an effort to transition away from traditional theme option pages, in favor of theme option sections within the customizer.

Timethief: I meant, of course, the name of your weblog in the upper left corner, not right. I need to get back to work so I am forced to actually think rationally again! (It's not under "custom design" farther down the page under "themes" -- which is where I first looked also.)

@timethief: let me know if you're still unable to access the "Theme Options" section within the customizer.

Timethief : When you hover over the name of your weblog at the top right, in the drop-down menu which has the link to the dashboard -- a little further down in that menu is the choice "customize".

Will you please clarify if this feature is available only to those who have purchase a custom design upgrade or not?

Once you've checked the option and saved your changes, subpages will automatically begin to appear under the content area on a parent page.

When I create a child page to go under the About page, it does show this child page on a drop-down menu from the list above the photo. However, it does not put the link automatically on the About page itself, so that when I suppress it from showing in the sidebar (I would have a sidebar over a hundred lines long in my course website if I didn't do this), there is no way to see it except from the drop-down menu. That would be fine for some purposes, but I find it hard to navigate a drop-down menu with a lengthy list of links and with second and sometimes even third layers, as I have at the course website.

Not having to put the links manually on the parent pages is one of the strongest reasons I use Misty Look, and I certainly don't want to go back to do this with the well over 100 pages I already have.

Thanks. As long as I can just keep Misty Look, I'll be fine.

You can enable this option under the "Theme Options" tab in the Customizer.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Yes, I know I can manually put the links on the pages. This would be a very onerous job at this point with all the pages and layers of pages I've already created.

Enter the anchor text you want to link to first.
Then use your mouse to highlight that anchor text.
Next click the chain icon in the Visual editor and proceed to create the link.

I just wanted to be sure that Misty Lake did not have the feature I need, and wondered if Misty Look is going to disappear entirely. Will those of us who use it have to give it up at some point?

Also, I merely mean professional in the sense of the theme itself not being "cutesy," like the Brand New Day theme is. Only my students access this weblog, and I am aware the front page is personalized. The pages that hold the actual course guidelines only use color to flag vital information, such as due dates.

I understand that if I change from Misty Look I won't be able to return to it (it's being replaced by Misty Lake).

That's not correct. When a theme becomes "retired" (that's what WP calls the themes that are replaced by newer ones), it will no longer be available in blogs created after this change but it remains available in older blogs. And Misty Look has always been one of the most popular wordpress.com themes, so it's highly unlikely that it will be completely removed in the near future.

The only other themes that support the parent/child page display that I want are not really professional looking enough for my needs.

This is my feedback [opinion] as a longtime blogger. Using colored fonts in your posts does not create a "professional appearance". That kind of appearance is normally only found on children's blogs, personal blogs and on blogs where the blogger is flogging merchandise or featuring advertising.