Parking your domain name
I thought it might be worthwhile to describe exactly what it means to “park” your domain name. This article will explain what exactly it means and why you should or should not park your domain name.
What exactly is a Domain Name?
As I mentioned in Introduction to domain names, your domain is really nothing more than the name you will give your site, like “cnn.com.” It is the URL “address” where people can find your site. When someone first starts their website, they will choose a domain name and register it through a domain name registrar. Then they “point” their domain name to a website, so that when people type that URL address they are taken to the site. For instance, typing siteforstarters.com takes you to the main page of this website.
Reasons to park your domain name
When most people create their own website, one of the very first steps they take is to buy a domain name from a domain registrar like GoDaddy. Since most people haven’t actually created their website at this point, they don’t have a place to point the domain name and they basically have a domain name floating in space.
Parking your domain name is not complicated at all. Basically, if you don’t have a website when you buy your domain name, the registrar will allow you to use a placeholder web page so that when people type in your domain name, they actually go to a real page. You can’t add any of your own content to the page or anything – you literally are just parking your domain name until you have your own real website.
Sometimes you might actually want to choose to park your domain name. One example is to buy domain names just in case you will use them in the future. Or maybe you bought a few domain names for one website and can’t decide which name you want.
Reasons not to park a domain name with your registrar
For most people, parking your domain name is just not an issue since you probably only plan on parking it until you decide on a web host and physically design your site. Since you won’t have it parked for very long, using their “phantom” page won’t really matter.
But if you park your domain name for a while, you might want to consider what content is actually on the placeholder page. Most people can notice right away that you are just parking your domain name, but some people will believe that it is actually your website. Therefore, they will consider anything on that page to be something you put there. Most registrars will just have some simple advertisements and endorsements, but you might want to check out the ads that they place so that they aren’t sending your visitors to scam sites.
Other options for parking your domain name
If you decided not to park a domain on your registrar’s page but aren’t prepared to develop your own website, you do have an option (but you will need to have a web host already).
The best situation for this specific scenario is if your web host allows unlimited web sites with your account. If that is the case, just point your domain name to your web host. You can create a blank page or a very simple page and deal with designing the site later.
If you use a web host where you need to pay for each website you use (which is the way most hosts work), you need to decide if it is worth it to pay for an empty site just to avoiding parking your domain. That decision is up to you.
What Next?
As you can see, parking domains is not rocket science once you figure out what it means. If you are considering parking a domain, there’s a good chance you are in the beginning stages of starting your own site. If that’s the case, you might want to read my How to Register Your Own Domain Name article. But your best bet is to read the How to Start your own website article. There are many other articles on SiteForStarters, but this one will get you headed in the right direction.
Good Luck!
