WordPress 3.8 – Don't exclude featured posts from front page query

Hi!

I’m trying to “hack” this for days now… We have the new WordPress 3.8 running ( on https://www.fashionmilk.com ) and I would like the featured posts in the grid to be shown on the front page as normal posts as well.

I found that the posts are excluded in a .php-file at inc/featured-posts.php
So I even deleted that whole piece of code (the piece below “Exclude featured posts from the home page blog query”). I know that’s not the right way to do it, but to my surprise even without this code, the posts aren’t showing up! I’m confused… Is there some kind of cache? Am I missing a piece of code?

Wouldn’t it be easier to make users choose, just as we can choose the featured tag to be visible or not? Just another option like: “Show/hide posts in the grid/slider on the front page” I know the posts are basically doubled then, but our readers might miss out on posts that are only visible in the featured area.

Can anyone tell me how I can do this for now? Tnx!