If you want to register a domain name to ensure that nobody else will take it, however, you have not created the website for it yet, you can park it. That is a feature that registrar companies provide if a domain is not 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 in question even though it won't load any content. If you would like, you can pick some default template that the registrar provides, such as For Sale or Under Construction, you can also forward the domain name to a different web address. Your second option is extremely helpful if you own a few domains, but you want every one of them to open the same website. For example, you may register domain.net and domain.org, then park them and forward them to domain.com. In this example, you will need hosting for the third domain only and the traffic to the other ones is going to be redirected to it.