The simple solution, very kindly proposed by Steve O’Hear, was to save the pages in “visual” format, instead of in “html” format. No idea why, but it was an instant remedy.
We don’t know. We’re on consultant number two.
Thank you, Samuel. We had deactivated all plug-ins and tested them by adding them back one at a time. The only conflict we located was an odd one: activating the Sharedaddy plug-in (a social media plug-in) caused our “About” page to disappear. But no other conflicts were detected.
Otherwise, the content of the pages and posts disappear whether the other plug-ins were active or not.