I just purchased the software and I have installed it. Basically, what we as a company currently have is 8 different sites, which means 8 different domains. Our goal is to make it so that our people do not have to copy articles, calendars, etc. 8 different times. I have installed the software onto a copy of the site that gets the most traffic. I am using a host that uses cpanel. I have already created a folder that contains all of the data for the current website. How do I make the current site into a slave site of the master (this is the site that I have installed the software on). I guess I am not sure what scenario in the tutorials that I should be following.

If you want to move an existing website as a slave site under JMS, this is a manual task that is already explained in this forum.
In very brief, you have to install in the MASTER all the extensions required by the slave site.
Once you have all the extension present in the master you can define a "fresh" slave site under JMS and NOT create its DB. The idea is to re-use the existing website DB or a copy of it with the "configuration.php" files that you copy (or move) into the slave site "deploy directory".

You will also have to copy all the images and material that you have in your current website.

The idea is to install the PHP code under the master and copy all the images, media, video, ... into the new directory structure.
When you have the PHP code present, you can use your existing website DB that is pre-installed for all the extension.
You perhaps will have to change some configuration parameters in the different extension like path to the image folder, ....

As you can see, this is a manual task.

still a little stuck. I have 2 websites...they are the same except for the content (articles and some banners), however I want one of the sites to be a slave of the other...can I still use the domain of the second one as a slave???

YES you can use domain for the second slave site.
You just have to configure your HTTP Server with (cPanel or other admin tool) that you have a domain that is located in a specific directory.
You can later provide to JMS the deploy directory where this domain is defined.
See the tutorial video CP-04 that is similar in the case of a domain (use AddOn domain instead of subdomain)
www.jms2win.com/tutorial#jms12x-CP-04

we are using hostgator, so you are saying that we would just have to foward the domain to that directory in hostgator?

I just got this message - * - You can now map your new domain (www.isurfwky.net/hostedhop/isurfhopkinsville) to the directory
* '/home/isurfwky/public_html/hostedhopkinsco/iSurfHopkinsCo/multisites/isurfhopkinsville'.
* - When the DNS will be updated with your new domain (perhaps you have to wait 24 hours),
* you will can go to your new domain and Joomla will request you a new installation (as usual).
* - Please use a new db prefix for each site and NEVER use 'jos' as prefix or if you want to keep 'jos' as prefix, create as many databases than you have sites.


I created a slave site...already had the master site set up as:

www.isurfwky.net/hosted/iSurfHopkinsCo

I had the original site under www.isurfwky.net/hostedhop/isurfhopkinsville

a new domain was created called:

/home/isurfwky/public_html/hostedhopkinsco/iSurfHopkinsCo/multisites/isurfhopkinsville

Now I am not sure what to do next.

Will the new domain and the installation now be empty?

so confused