If you'd like to register a domain name to ensure that nobody else is going to take it, but you haven't built the site for it yet, you may park it. It's a feature that registrar companies provide whenever a domain name isn't linked to any web or e mail hosting service. In this way, you can protect a brand name, for example, and you will own the domain name in question although it will not load any content. If you want, you can pick some standard template that the registrar provides, like For Sale or Under Construction, alternatively you can direct the domain name to an alternative web address. Your second option is extremely helpful if you own a few domains, but you want all 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 will need hosting for the third domain address only and the traffic to the other ones is going to be redirected to it.