When editing or creating an article in Joomla, you'll notice that there's an Images and links section below the main editor screen. Joomla offers these fields for images and links to make it easier to create a series of articles sharing the same standardized layout—displaying an image at the top of the article and/or displaying a series of hyperlinks above (or below) the article. Although you're free to add images and hyperlinks to the article text itself, the Images and links fields allow for a foolproof way of inserting images and links displayed in a fixed position.
The advantage is that you (or other content contributors) don't have to repeatedly make sure that they insert images in the appropriate article location, which can easily lead to mistakes. By adding an Intro Image and setting its alignment, all article intro texts will share the same layout. The same holds for the three hyperlinks you can add through Images and links; if you want articles...