This article is a basic outline of the differences between a Sub-Domains, Parked Domains, and Add-On Domains. Creation of each domain type on your selected hosting service may differ depending on what control control panel is offered. Each hosting service is diffferent in what their hosting plans include, so all three options may not be available under your plan. Any questions about what options are available with your particular plan, or for help in setting up these options on your hosting plan should be directed to your hosts support Help/FAQ pages or to your hosts support team.

Here are some basic differences between the three:

Sub domain

• Lets say you own domain site1.com.
• You only own 1 domain or only wish to have a forum on one domain.
• You decide to install a forum and want the forum installed in a directory called forum
• You can create a sub-domain by adding the directory 'forum' as a sub-domain from your domain site1.com control panel.
• Once the sub-domain forum is created, people can access your forum as either site1.com/forum or forum.site1.com

Parked Domain

• You own multiple domains such as site1.com, site1.org and site2.net.
• You want site1.com as the main domain for your website and you want people who type in site1.org or site2.net to go to the main site1.com website.
• Using the domain control panel for site1, you can park additional domains
• The multiple domain names you own will be parked and will point to the site1.com domain.
• You will be unable to use a parked domains for seperate websites unless you unpark them.
• This is a good way if you own multiple domains such as site1.com, site1.org, site1.net to have all domains point to the same website domain

Add-On Domains

• You own two domains site1.com and site2.org.
• Your main domain is site1.org
• You want to add your second domain site2.org to your hosting account
• You want the two domains to be totally separate and independent websites.
• From the domain site1.com control panel you can add the second domain
• Each domain is accessed by a control panel that is common to both
• When a person types site1.com in their browser they are taken to site1.com
• When a person types site2.org in their browser they are taken to site2.org
• Each domain shares your hosting plans resources