When you create new sites in SharePoint 2010, you may find that “Master Page” is missing from the site settings, and there’s no apparent easy way to change the master page, outside of SharePoint Designer.  This happens when the publishing features are not enabled, and is easy to fix by just enabling the right features.

Site Settings will look as follows:

Capture

All you have to do to fix is turn on the publishing features.  The “Master Page” setting is now dependant on the publishing infrastructure.  First, go into Site Collection Features and enable “SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure” at the site collection level.  Then go into Manage Site Features and enable “SharePoint Server Publishing” at the site level.

You’ll then get the master page and layout links as shown below:

Capture