hover does not work after dropdown class delete - html

Question

I have a bootstrap template I am practising on. In the navbar there is "Blog" and "Test"
On the test button, I removed the li class="dropdown ", because I wanted to try to make a button where the hover is active like on the "blog" button. But when I hover over the test, the text only display blue, on there is not a white background.
I cannot figure out how I can make that work? I have to make a CSS class for a button on the navbar, who does not have a dropdown.
For fun sake I tried to delete all the CSS, but the hover was still working on the blog button.
<div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="navbar-collapse-1">
<!-- main-menu -->
<ul class="nav navbar-nav ">
<li class="dropdown ">
Blog
<ul class="dropdown-menu">
<li >Blog Home <span class="badge">v1.1</span></li>
<li >Blog Home 2 <span class="badge">NEW</span></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav ">
<li>
Test
<ul class="dropdown-menu">
<li >Blog Home <span class="badge">v1.1</span></li>
<li >Blog Home 2 <span class="badge">NEW</span></li>
<li class="dropdown ">
<a class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" href="#">Large Image</a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu to-left">
<li >Right Sidebar</li>
<li >Left Sidebar</li>
<li >Without Sidebar</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="dropdown ">
<a class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" href="#">Medium Image</a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu to-left">
<li >Right Sidebar</li>
<li >Left Sidebar</li>
<li >Without Sidebar</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="dropdown ">
<a class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" href="#">Masonry</a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu to-left">
<li >Right Sidebar</li>
<li >Left Sidebar</li>
<li >Without Sidebar</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li >Timeline</li>
<li >Blog Post</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>

Answer 1

To style your links within navigation menus you have to add one of these lines in your CSS file according to your HTML
(1) if the main parent div is .navbar-collapse:
.navbar-collapse .navbar-nav>li a{background-color:#fff;}
(2) if the main parent is Navbar-default:
.navbar-default .navbar-nav>li a {background-color:#fff;}
(3) if the main parent is navbar-inverse:
.navbar-inverse .navbar-nav>li a{background-color:#fff;}
And something like this depending on the main parent class and the class with in ul tag