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Web Hosting: What is a parked domain? How about a sub or add on domain?

In this article, we will cover each type of domain that can be added in SiteAdmin or cPanel.

Primary Domains

Your primary domain is the main domain name on the account. It’s the domain you use when you first order your hosting service and normally is the domain most people will use to access your site. The primary domain serves the files located in your public_html folder.

Addon Domains

An Addon domain is a domain that will display a completely different website.

Suppose you have MyCatSite.com, but you also want to launch a sister site called MyDogSite.com. You would do this using an addon domain.

It is important to note that adding addon domains or parked domains doesn’t actually give you a domain name; it just gives you the ability to add that domain to your account. You’ll still have to pay for the domain name, too.

Addon Domain KB Shortcuts:

• Create a new Addon Domain
• Change Addon/Sub Domains Website Folder
• Convert Addon Domain to a cPanel or SiteAdmin Account
• Convert cPanel or SiteAdmin Account to Addon Domain
• Host a Website Outside of public_html

Parked Domains

A Parked domain is a domain name that leads to the same website as another domain name. The domain is, in essence, parked on top of the other domain.

For example, suppose we have a domain name mysite.com. If we park mysite.org on top of the .com domain, a visitor to our site will be able to access the site from either the .com or the .org address. The visitor won’t notice any difference in the website at all no matter which one she chooses.

Parked Domain KB Shortcut:

• Create a new Parked Domain

Sub-Domains

Subdomains, though, will work off of your existing domain names. They can be used for the same purposes as regular domain names; they just have an extra part in front.

www is actually considered a subdomain, but one that is usually parked on top of the main domain.

Another example could be if you created two subdomains dogs and cats on mypetsite.com. You’d visit those subdomains in your browser using http://dogs.mypetsite.com/and http://cats.mypetsite.com/, respectively.

You could set each subdomain to go to its own website, or to go to a section of the main mypetsite.com site.

Sub Domain KB Shortcuts:

• Setup a Sub Domain
• Change a Addon/Sub Domains website folder
• Configure your Sub Domain to use Google Apps