Fix Customizer preview showing an empty featured-pages block

[deepench]

Related to themegrill/radiate-pro#46 (same root cause, both editions)

Changes proposed in this Pull Request:

Same bug as reported for Radiate Pro: on a static front page with no featured pages ever selected, the Customizer preview showed an empty #featured_pages wrapper that the published front end doesn't render. Root cause: front-page.php checked $page_array[...] != 0, a loose comparison. Inside the Customizer preview, an unsaved setting resolves to its registered default (an empty string ''), and under PHP 8 comparing a non-numeric string against an integer coerces the int to string, so '' != 0 becomes true -- the guard opens and WP_Query runs with a post__in that matches nothing, leaving an empty wrapper. On the published front end the same call returns false, false != 0 is false, so nothing renders there.

Fixed by giving each get_theme_mod() call an explicit 0 default and switching the guard to ! empty().

Before (empty gap, outlined red)	After (no gap)

(screenshots pushed to the evidence-pr-64 branch for this PR only -- fine to delete once reviewed)

How to test the changes in this Pull Request:

1. Set up a static front page (Settings > Reading > "A static page") with no featured pages ever selected in Customizer > Front Page Featured Section.
2. Open Appearance > Customize and look at the front page in the preview pane -- there should be no empty gap between the header and the content.
3. Open the same URL in a normal window (outside the Customizer) -- confirm it already looked fine there (this fix is preview-only).
4. Select an actual featured page and confirm it still renders correctly in both the preview and the published page.

Types of changes:

• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• Enhancement (modification of the currently available functionality)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)

Other information:

• Have you added an explanation of what your changes do and why you would like us to include them?
• Have you successfully ran tests with your changes locally?
• Have you updated the documentation accordingly?

Changelog entry

Fix - Customizer preview no longer shows an empty featured-pages gap when none are selected.

[github-actions]

QA suite — refused, no regression spec

This PR changes product source but adds no spec, so the suite was
refused before booting WordPress — running it just to report the same
thing at the end costs runner minutes for nothing. Run
/claudegrill:verify-fix locally and let write-spec add the guard
to this branch, then push again.

Source files changed with no matching spec

front-page.php

[Copilot]

Copilot review overview

🟢 Approval recommended

The focused fix addresses the preview issue with no unresolved review concerns.

Review effort: Lite
Findings: None

What changed in this PR

Fixes the Customizer preview displaying an empty featured-pages block when no pages are selected.

Changes:

• Defaults featured-page settings to 0.
• Prevents rendering when no featured pages are selected.

File	Description
front-page.php	Corrects featured-page defaults and rendering guard.

---

💡 Add a code-review agent skill or configure MCP servers for context-aware, tailored reviews. Learn more in the docs.