After installation administrator freezes

Please give us FTP access. You can use Report to Moderator to sent this privately.

"The names are being shortened and altered slightly"

This must not happen. Please unzip hot_business25_hotstart.zip on your local computer, then upload all the files to the server using FTP program, such as Filezilla: filezilla-project.org/

The name alteration was due to a lower level FTP client transfer.
That was solved by using a different program.

The server chmod I manually changed for the public_html file.
The setting said 0777 temporarily. However when I checked with the host
they said it was 0644, and that sometimes a Joomla installation will cause
it to trip on their end.

So advice to your clients installing - If you get internal server error, first call your ISP to see if the root server setting flipped.
After it was set to 0755 all worked as usual.

Thank you for your quick responses guys!

Yes best method is to copy hot_start zip then uncompressed it there ,that way also you make sure all files are there.