Understanding article image size & placement

After unzipping the contents of the hot_start.zip folder into a new, local folder, what do I do to create the local website? How do you install joomla and the template on a local drive? What 'web server component' do I execute to do that?

I searched out the answer and found it. I think I did anyway. I just used the wrong search words and came up with nothing before I wrote the last response. We will see how it goes. Thanks.

I can see how my last response may have been confusing, so let me clarify. The 'answer' is was talking about in that post was regarding finding the software to load the website on my local computer, NOT that I found the answer to the image display problem that I am trying to solve.

Let me state the problem we are having again:

It is my understanding that the lead article on the page should display the 'full' image and the intro articles below should display the 'intro' image.

The problem is either that the 'intro' image rather than the 'full' image is displayed when the article is in the leading position, and the 'full' image continues to be displayed when the article is pushed out of the leading position to an intro position.

There is no problem with the images in single articles or the 'Latest' column. Both of them work fine.

I don't see where I have changed a setting, other than what the support tech told me to change, that might have caused this display error.

This is the problem that we need help fixing.

You can edit :

templates\hot_news_portal\html\com_content\featured\default_item.php

if you would like to change layout behavior.

Why would I need to edit this file if I never changed the version that was installed with the template and it was working that way? This makes no sense.

Please, these are simple questions:

1. Should the lead article display the full image and the intro articles be displaying the intro image?

and

2. If that is the case, what must I do to get it to work again, like it did in the demo and after it was installed on my server?

For "Obama, Putin Hold Talks on Syria" article in demo we use same image (full) for intro and full image. Intro image float is set to "Use Global"

For other articles we have same image for intro and big for full image. Intro image float is set to "Left"

That's it