Lots of people have asked me to explain the difference between parked, addon and sub-domains so I’ll try to keep it simple. Let’s start with a Parked domain.
Parked Domain explanation
A parked domain is not a unique or standalone website. Instead, it is simply a ‘forward’ to the primary domain name of your cPanel account. Parked domains are commonly used to redirect a domain that you do not have a website for OR for when you have more than one domain that should lead to your primary domain. Scenarios may include owning multiple Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as:
mywebsite.co.uk
mywebsite.info
and needing to point them to your main mywebsite.com domain. You can use this too for directing any common misspellings of your domain name (obviously those that you have registered first!). Consider using Dynadot.com as registrars, their prices seem lower than the rest.
Add-on domain explanation
An addon domain is a website, with its own unique content. For shared hosting such as the excellent cut-price Hostgator, you just point your new domain to your main account you registered. This will be accessible through CPanel and we simply need to visit the ‘Add-on domain’ section to make it work.
Sub-domain explanation
A subdomain is a second website with unique content, but you have no new domain name. Instead, you use an existing domain name and change the first part of the address to another name.
For example, you have mywebsite.com and you add a subdomain to make it forum.mywebsite.com or sales.mywebsite.com