Featured Products not showing anywhere, featured_id incrementing x 2

[David R]

Sorting through a 1.39 -> 1.54 migration.
I think I may have damaged something. :-)
When I enter a product into the Featured Products Table in Admin, it shows up there normally. If I enter several, they all show up. Dates can be set or not, they pick up the product image, etc.
- BUT -
On the front end, the featured_products page sees no products (gives the "will be added soon" prompt), and the Featured Products sidebox is a header with no displayed data.
Looking at the database, the records are there, but strangely, the featured_id increments by 2 with each new product addition.
So when I started this, I'd added two products, and they turned out to have featured_id values of 2 and 4.
Nothing to lose, I edited them to 1 and 2, but got no reward. :-(
I deleted them, and added a new product.
It was assigned featured_id 6, and also doesn't show up on my featured_products page, or anywhere else.
This is true with the default template.
Any troubleshooting tips would be a really wonderful thing.
Thanks!

[David R]

It would appear that (no kidding) the products I'd selected to use as test "Featured" products were disabled in the database I imported. So, of course they didn't show on the featured products page, or anywhere else...
Enabling them caused them to miraculously appear.
No clue about the 2x incrementing, but it doesn't appear to be hurting anything.