There are two services that you’ll need for a functioning web site - a domain name plus a web hosting plan for it. If you type the domain name in your web browser, you see the content that’s uploaded in the website hosting account, but if that domain name is not linked to such an account or to an e-mail service, it's parked. To put it differently, the domain is registered and you are its owner, but it doesn't have any content of its own. Rather, it can open either a pre-made “Under Construction / For Sale” webpage from the registrar company, or it can be forwarded to any other URL of your choice. The advantage of parking a domain is that you can keep it and ensure that nobody else is going to take it. At the same time, it won't take a slot for a hosted domain name within your account. In addition, you can park domains if you have a .com, for example, and you register domain addresses with other extensions such as .net, .org or country-code ones to direct them to the main site in order to protect a brand name.