Making test sites in a subdirectory of a live joomla site

So I want a website which is a front end, but I want to be able to develop websites in subdirectories of this front-end site.

I just found this tutorial of how to do the reverse. Mainly editing the configuration.php file.

Also found this documentation from Joomla on how to move sites around in directorys/sub-directories

So, after much trial and error I finally got it working:

1. So, I changed MAMPs directory to my new setup website:
1. /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mynewwebsite
2. I then moved other websites within its' directory structure
1. moved /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/testsite1 to /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mynewwebsite/testsite1
3. edited the configuration.php file in testsite1
1. I actually found it had changed itself! But just to note:
2. public $log_path = '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mynewwebsite/testsite1/logs';
3. public $tmp_path = '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mynewwebsite/testsite1/tmp';

This sort of worked. It worked on the localhost machine perfectly, but when browsing externally it came up with:

404 - Article not found joomla error

I had a quick search and found this forum topic about it. Turns out a temporary fix is to turn off "Search Engine Friendly URLs" under Administration > Global Configuration > Site: