A client contacted me yesterday with a problem they were having with masterpages. After talking to them on the phone to make sure they were doing everything correctly, they sent me the files so I could take a look.
After take a closer look at the files I realized that the masterpage was being applied correctly, but the masterpage items themselves were not present. That is when I went to the pages panel menu and noticed that "hide master items" had been chosen. After choosing "show master items" from the menu, everything went back to normal again.
