If you wish to register a domain name to ensure that no one else is going to take it, but you haven't developed the site for it yet, you can park it. It's a service that registrar companies provide whenever a domain address is not linked to any web or e mail hosting service. This way, you'll be able to protect a brand name, for example, and you'll own the domain name in question although it will not open any content. If you would like, you can choose some standard template that the registrar offers, such as For Sale or Under Construction, you can also direct the domain to a new web address. Your second option is extremely helpful in case you own a number of domains, but you want every one of them to open the same website. For example, you could register domain.net and domain.org, then park them and direct them to domain.com. In this example, you are going to need hosting for the third domain address only and the traffic to the other ones is going to be redirected to it.