Followed "jms2win_UserManual_V120.pdf" and everything made sense until page 13 where paragraph starts with "In addition to the required site definitions..."

From that point through page 15 I "assumed" it was talking about adding slave sites AFTER the first one. This is based in part on page 16 NOT looking like what I saw when I created my first slave site.

The REAL confusion started on Page 17 with:

I figured I wanted the first of the 3 methods, "Fresh Slave Site" but, well, didn't I just create that ? Then the blurb about there is "also 2 way" did not make sense based on anything I have seen in the multi site component so far. Maybe this is also for down the road.

Back to the Fresh Slave Site section which states "We assume that you have declared all the domains on your server and that you have routed them to the same Joomla installation." Frankly, I was not able to "relate" the three examples of (1) apache, (2) cpanel, and (3) plesk to the godaddy environment.

I know (as with so many things) this will make sense as I look back on it and I am hoping somebody will be so kind as to offer specific steps for a godaddy premium hosted account.

In godaddy (maybe others are like this too) there is a first domain that maps to the top of a directory structure. Inside that directory structure there is a /joomla directory which I think is what the manual is referring to as "the installation".

Then I have three (3) other domains that point to subdirectories from the main directory. The DNS mapping for those was handled transparently by godaddy.

How do I now redirect the DNS entries using the godaddy control panel to point, say domain_2 to the domain_1/joomla/subdirectory.

OR, is that what I am supposed to do.

After which, the manual refers to a "standard Joomla installation" and I don't understand what that means either.

Uh oh; just realized I am starting to run on.

Any help is appreciated.

Concerning the GoDaddy configuration, it is document like in the case of JMS 1.0.x and when it was not possible to use the Symbolic Links.
With Godaddy, the symbolic link is allowed.
So you can create your domain or sub-domain in godaddy as usual. But in this case, you have to specify the deploy folder that is the one created by GoDaddy.

In the user manual, we have tried to give some example depending on the hosting company. We also give the example the most specific that consist to share the same folder for each domain and sub-domain. This is the core JMS processing. The Symbolic Link is a facility added when using a hosting company that does not provide interface to force the directory that must be assigned to a domain or sub-domain.

Those sample are the one provided by customers and that we have included into the user manual. We don't have hosting account in all the possible hosting company available in the world.

You have in the FAQ a section that give also documentation concerning some hosting company. This is similar to the manual.

I suggest that you start to understand JMS in using the tutorial.
The tutorial do not use the domain or sub-domain that avoid to configure godaddy.
When you will be familiar with the content of the deploy folder and have seen what is really deploy, perhaps you will better understand the concept that is explained in video of tutorial step 0

So in summary, if you want to create domain or sub-domain, you can do it as usual.
You will just have to write in the JMS deploy folder the location on the disk where godaddy has created the domain. This is the full path on the disk.

Did not know there were tutorials. Watched those. JMS concept makes good sense but instructions are confusing to non-technical business person like me because selecting course of action between multiple versions and multiple scenarios presumes knowledge that does not exist.

So sorry.

Finally found the godaddy install example after scrolling around a while because the "how to configure the hosting provider" link from tutorial section 10 has godaddy link that brings up patch page.

JMS settings in my Joomla installation state that symbolic links are "forbidden" as shown in the image attached. This "appears" not to matter according to hello.php tutorial because domain2 is definitely mapped to subdirectory, domain1\joomla.

Back to manual on page 22, section 3.2.7 where it advises to proceed with standard joomla installation which results in message that

"Path is already in use by another application install."

First sentence on page 23 states that "When the new domain names are correctly routed to your Joomla directory, the rest is performed by Joomla Multi Sites."

Clearly I have not done this correctly. Any suggestions ?

On godaddy, the symbiolic link must work.
The reason why you have the Symbolic Link forbidden is probably due to an error in the path provided to Joomla for the tmp and log direcrtories.

You have to go in Joomla / Global Configuration and check the tmp and log path.
They must be a full path to the directory where is located your website.
Sometimes, I have saw in Joomla that person are using /tmp and /var/logs in GoDaddy.
Those path are wrong because they are located somewhere where you don't have write permission.

You have to provide the path to your root of you master website followed by tmp and logs.
In using the JMS notation, tmp = {root}/tmp and logs = {root}/logs
Up to you to replace the {root} by its real path that I don't know.
You can know this "master root directory" when you go in JMS and ask to create a slave site. This is display on the screen.

This error is explained in the tutorial step 6. At the end it is explain to check the global configuration and tmp + logs path.

The first sentence page 23 is equivalent to what you have probably saw in the video of tutorial step 0 that present the concept.
When you have a domain, you have :
- to configure the DNS server. Generally there is an interface proposed by your domain registrar (perhaps also GoDaddy here).
- to configure the hosting server (here godaddy) to define in which directory the website is located on the disk when a specific domain is used.
This is what is explain in the JMS user manual that require to assign (map, define) the location path associated to a domain or a sub-domain name.

In the video tutorial step 0, I have illustrate the case with different path and also the case where the path must be identical between several domain (the case when the Symbolic Link is forbidden).

So to better understanda this section, I suggest that you review the video in tutorial step 0 to try understand the concept.

JMS Site Manager says that my domain1.net DNS mapping is to

/home/content/g/d/p/gdproduct/html/joomla

which it calls my "Master site directory" when I edit or add a slave site.

As instructed I went into the Joomla > Site > Global Configuration.

in the "System" section I prefixed existing value to get:

/home/content/g/d/p/gdproduct/html/joomla/var/logs

in the "Server" section prefixed existing value to get:

/home/content/g/d/p/gdproduct/html/joomla/tmp

Components > Multi Sites > Settings still showed forbidden.

Re-read your post and then looked closely at paths and did NOT see a "var" subdirectory in the joomla sub-directory; so removed from logs path to get:

/home/content/g/d/p/gdproduct/html/joomla/logs

This changed the Symbolic Links in Settings to "Allowed" as shown in the image attached.

Before continuing I would like to note that godaddy is the domain registrar and ALSO the hosting company in this case so I am completely in their environment AND I am "assuming" that you want the DNS entry for domain2.net to point to the \joomal subdirectory, and it does.

Then I READ and re-READ your sentence below and watched the summary video in the first section of the tutorial and it dawned on me that I was NOT defining the primary site (domain1.com) in JMS Site Manager. In other words, I only had one entry in JMS Site Manager and that was domain2.net.

So I deleted that single entry of domain2.net and started the process by creating a new first site for domain1.com - which I am trapped in now.

You can be SURE I'll have issues with that - but - sounds like we are getting closer

Am I on the right track ?

Now that Symbolic Link is allowed, you can create your first slave site using the procedure as described in the tutorial video step 9.

For exemple and to be short:
Site ID = slave1
domain = {site_url}/multisites/{site_id}
deploy folder = {site_dir}

With those 3 parameters this should give you a fresh slave site to install using the joomla installer.

When you will go on your ........./multisites/slave1
you should have the standard joomla installation screen.
The ..... is the URL of you master website.