Fiddled with the front page

First of all, this is not an issue that prevents my website from working. This is a “hmm – this worked, but why?” issue. My website is https://www.stbedesantafe.org.

I created a “homepage.php” because I made 2 major alterations to the “index.php”. (1) I wanted to display featured posts (created category “Feature” to accomplish this) on the front page, which now show in the middle column. (2) I created a static left sidebar to display a weekly schedule (built in a table).

I accomplished (2) quite by accident. I copied the sidebar code from the index.php, fully intending to try to figure out how to change it from calling the Page Right Sidebar to calling the Blog Right Sidebar. I pasted the code, changed the ( ‘pageright’ ) to ( ‘pageleft’ ), and then viewed my front page. I fully expected to see the Page Right Sidebar duplicated on the left and the right. It wasn’t – the sidebar on the left was blank. For some reason, I thought to add some widgets to the Blog Right Sidebar, and they appeared on the left side of my page. That’s the “that worked, but why?” part of my question. I thought I would have to change “get_sidebar” to “get_something_else”, but I didn’t. The code automatically called the Blog Right Sidebar. Can you explain that, and do I really need to have “get_something_else” in my code? (Sometimes I am of the ain’t broke don’t fix school, but this seems as if it could be unstable.)

For change (1), I found some code based on someone else’s solution to displaying a specific category of posts on an otherwise static front page, and the code does exactly what I wanted it to. I have placed the code so that the posts appear in the middle column, but there is a lot of real estate between the page title (“Welcome ….”) and the first post. Is there a way you can see to eliminate all that blank space?

Here is the entire code for the homepage.php:

<?php
/*
Template Name:  Homepage
*/
?>

<?php
// Exit if accessed directly
if ( !defined('ABSPATH')) exit;

/**
 * Main Template
 *
 * @file           index.php
 * @package        Preference Lite
 * @author         Andre Jutras
 * @copyright      2013 StyledThemes.com
 * @license        license.txt
 * @version        Release: 1.0
 * @since          available since Release 1.0
 */

get_header(); ?>

<!-- Main Content -->
	<div class="container">
		<div class="row">
			<!-- Component -->
			<aside id="right-column" class="span3">
					<?php get_sidebar( 'pageleft' ); ?>
				</aside>

			<section id="component" class="span6" role="main">
				<?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?>
					<?php /* Start the Loop */ ?>
					<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
						<?php get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() ); ?>
					<?php endwhile; ?>
					<?php preference_content_nav( 'nav-below' ); ?>

<?php
global $post;
$args = array( 'numberposts' => 3, 'category_name' => Feature);
$myposts = get_posts( $args );
foreach( $myposts as $post ) :	setup_postdata($post); ?><h3><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php the_content(); ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>

				<?php else : ?>
					<article id="post-0" class="post no-results not-found">
					<?php if ( current_user_can( 'edit_posts' ) ) :
						// Show a different message to a logged-in user who can add posts.
					?>

						<header class="entry-header">
							<h1 class="entry-title"><?php _e( 'No posts to display', 'preference' ); ?></h1>
						</header>

						<div class="entry-content">
							<p><?php printf( __( 'Ready to publish your first post? <a href="%s">Get started here</a>.', 'preference' ), admin_url( 'post-new.php' ) ); ?></p>

						</div><!-- .entry-content -->
					<?php else :
						// Show the default message to everyone else.
					?>
						<header class="entry-header">
							<h1 class="entry-title"><?php _e( 'Nothing Found', 'preference' ); ?></h1>
						</header>

						<div class="entry-content">
							<p><?php _e( 'Apologies, but no results were found. Perhaps searching will help find a related post.', 'preference' ); ?></p>
							<?php get_search_form(); ?>
						</div><!-- .entry-content -->

					<?php endif; // end current_user_can() check ?>

					</article><!-- #post-0 -->

				<?php endif; // end have_posts() check ?>
			</section><!-- end component -->		

			<aside id="right-column" class="span3">
					<?php get_sidebar( 'pageright' ); ?>
				</aside>
	</div>

<!-- .container -->

<?php get_footer(); ?>

If you see anything I can do, thanks in advance.