What does Subdomain / Addon Domain / Parked Domain mean

In the control panel, you’ll find the sections called Addon Domains, Parked Domains and Subdomains. What do all those different domain types mean?

What is a subdomain?

In general, a subdomain is a domain which is a part of another domain name. So if you have the domain name example.com, then test.example.com would be a subdomain of example.com. And similarly, sub.test.example.com is a subdomain of both example.com and test.example.com.

In your control panel, the Subdomains section allows you to do two things with subdomains.

Firstly, you can use the Subdomains section to create subdomains of domain names which you already have on your account. So if your account already has the domain example.com attached to it, you can create subdomains like blog.example.com and shop.example.com there.

Secondly, you can add free subdomains to your account through this section. So you can add more subdomains like example.superfree.host to your account as well.

Regardless of what type of subdomain you create, a new directory will be created in your account with a new htdocs directory so you can upload a different, separate website to the subdomain.

What is an Addon Domain?

If you already have your own domain name like example.com or example.net registered at a separate domain name provider like Spaceship, you can add it to your account using the Addon Domains section. After you’ve set the nameservers of your domain name to your account’s nameservers (you can find the nameserver addresses in your control panel and instructions for how to set those with your domain registrar), you can add the domain through the Addon Domains section.

After you’ve done so, a new directory will be created in your account with a new htdocs directory so you can upload a different, separate website for the domain name.

What is a Parked Domain?

Similarly to an Addon Domain, you can add your own domain name to your account using the Parked Domains section. But instead of creating a new website folder for the domain, you can select an existing domain to “park” your new domain on. By doing so, both domains will serve the same website.

However, note that Parked Domains simply mean that the domains both serve content from the same directory. With a simple HTML website or very basic PHP site, the same website will be shown on both domains. However, when using a more complex script or CMS, the results may vary. For example, WordPress always redirects visitors to the Website URL configured in the WordPress settings, so the parked domains will be redirected to the original domain.

So by default, Parked Domains will show the same website, but the actual results may differ depending on the content you’re hosting on the site your domain is parked on.