Installing and Running Drupal in Subfolder - Beginner
I have read "How to get Drupal 7 installed in a sub-folder / sub-directory properly?" already - i'm having a difficult time deciphering what steps to take from this post.


Your problem is not a Drupal problem. It is a file permissions problem. It is probably caused by you using ftp to create the sub-direactory to hold Drupal.


  but im only getting 404/page not found error messages when i navigate to this URL. 


This means that the the directory you've created with ftp, and/or the files you've uploaded in that directory is not readable by the webserver user.

If you have access to the command line interface (CLI), you may need to use chown to make sure the Drupal directory and files are owned by the webserver user, or at least use chmod to make sure they're readable by the webserver user.

However, since you use ftp, I assume that you have not CLI access to your installation? In that case, you need to contact customer support at your hosting provider to learn what tools exist to change the read permissions of files and directories to be readable by the webserver user.


  this post lost me at " I already modified the .htaccess in the parent drupal installation to ignore the sub-folder and i also set the $base_url in the sub-directory drupal installation."


That is just noise in the question.  You need to read the upvoted answer to that question for the solution.

In fact, you should ignore all the stuff about modifying .htaccess in the duplicate issue.  I am no idea why the person who wrote it believes this is relevant. Each Drupal installation has its own .htaccess in its own directory, and the one that comes with Drupal is fine provided you do a clean install. The simple fact is that there is nothing special about installing Drupal in a subfolder.  You need to get the directory and file permissions correct tho' - and using ftp to set things up may have caused the permissions to be wrong.