If you wish to register a domain name to make sure that nobody else will take it, but you have not built the web site for it yet, you may park it. It's a feature that registrar companies offer if a domain name isn't linked to any web or e mail hosting service. In this way, you'll be able to protect a brand name, for example, and you'll own the domain name in question although it won't open any content. If you would like, you can pick some standard template that the registrar offers, such as For Sale or Under Construction, you can also forward the domain to an alternative web address. Your second option is very useful in case you own a number of domain names, but you want every one of them to open the same site. As an illustration, you may register domain.net and domain.org, then park them and direct them to domain.com. In this example, you'll need hosting for the third domain name only and the traffic to the other ones will be redirected to it.