How-to · Beginner · 5 minutes each
How to Park an Extra Domain
Everything you need to make the spare names you own show something useful instead of an error — the steps in order, the snag to watch, and the tip our support desk gives everybody.
Straight answer first
In a line: make the spare names you own show something useful instead of an error — a beginner-level task that takes 5 minutes each.
The walkthrough below covers every step, the mistake most people make, and the shortcut worth keeping. On Hosting Seller plans several of these steps are already done for you, and we say where.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 1 August 2026
Beginner
Skill needed
4
Stages to finish
Free
Help included
Tested
On our own kit
You do not need to be technical for this. The walkthrough is written for first-timers, tested on our own platform, and honest about which parts are genuinely fiddly and which are merely unfamiliar.
One promise before you start: nothing in this guide is irreversible. Where a step could bite, we say so and give you the undo.
The overview before the detail
Here is the route in full: send the spare name to your hosting first, add it to the account as an alias name, or put a holding page on it instead and redirect it rather than mirror the site.
No stage needs code or a terminal unless the guide says so outright, and where it does, the exact commands are printed. The full step-by-step sits below; the sections around it give the context that makes it stick.
The classic snag
Aliasing spare names so they serve the same site with no redirect. Search engines index the duplicate copy, and the authority you have built gets split between two names doing one job.
Forewarned really is forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the subject produces, and it is entirely avoidable once somebody names it.
The tip we hand out to everybody
Go through your parked names once a year. Domains bought for ideas that never happened renew themselves forever by default, and cutting ten speculative names usually pays for one you will actually use.
Small habits like this are the real difference between people who find hosting easy and people who find it stressful. The tools are identical; the working method is not.
How our platform shortens this
We have automated the steps that do not deserve your time: certificates issue and reissue themselves, the installer handles application setup, the daily backup covers the what-if, and per-site settings live in a panel instead of a config file. The guide above covers what remains — the part that is actually about your site.
Stuck halfway through at an odd hour? That is exactly what round-the-clock human support is for — tell us where you are in this guide and we will pick it up from there.
The hosting this guide is written against
Tutorials age badly when they are written against imaginary hosting. These are written against ours: the same panel, the same installer and the same defaults you will meet.
Backups run every day on every plan, and putting a file or a database back takes one click from the panel.
- Step by step, tested exactly as printed
- The snag flagged before you reach it
- The dull steps are already automated
- People on hand at any hour if you stall
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
The snag, named early
The classic mistake for this exact job is flagged before step one, so 5 minutes each stays 5 minutes each.
Scoped honestly
Make the spare names you own show something useful instead of an error is a beginner-level task — this guide budgets 5 minutes each and says which steps the platform absorbs.
Automation where it belongs
SSL, backups and installs run themselves here, so the guide covers only what is genuinely yours to do.
Works exactly as written
Every step tested on the platform we run — no 'your host may differ' hand-waving anywhere.
4 steps, no filler
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking, with the fiddly parts marked as fiddly.
Help on the counter
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-guide included.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Send the spare name to your hosting first
Set its nameservers to the same pair your main domain uses. Parking is something your hosting does, not something the registrar does, so the name has to arrive here first.
- 2
Add it to the account as an alias name
cPanel's Aliases screen, still called parked domains in older versions, attaches the extra name to your existing site. Type either domain and the same pages come back.
- 3
Or put a holding page on it instead
For a name you bought for a project that has not started, add it as its own site with a single 'coming soon' page. It can collect email addresses while it waits instead of doing nothing.
- 4
Redirect it rather than mirror the site
If the spare exists to protect the main brand, send it there with a 301. Two domains serving identical pages compete against each other in search results, which helps nobody.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for your own client
- WordPress Toolkit, with updates applied for you
- cPanel, the panel the rest of the trade already knows
- A 99.9% uptime commitment, watched by monitoring day and night
- The Softaculous installer for one-click application setup
- A backup taken daily, with restores you run yourself
- Mailboxes that carry your own domain name
- WebP image optimisation built in and costing nothing
- Upgrades apply to the account in place, with no move between plans
- Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
Alias, redirect or addon — which one should I park it as?
Redirect with a 301 for brand-protection names that should feed the main site. Addon with a holding page for projects still to come. Alias only when you genuinely want both names serving the same site, with canonical tags sorting out the search side.
Does a parked domain need a certificate of its own?
Yes. Any name a visitor might type with https in front of it needs certificate coverage, and it issues automatically once the domain points here. A spare name throwing a security warning looks considerably worse than one that goes nowhere.
How quickly can I be up and running?
Minutes, not days. The account opens the moment the order clears, the domain — free for year one on annual plans — attaches straight away, and the one-click installer puts WordPress or any of 400+ applications on the page before you leave your chair. Already have a site elsewhere? Hand it over and we move it free, usually inside a day.
Who actually runs the company?
Hosting Seller is a trading name of Bohzo Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales — a real business with a public record and terms published under English law. Looking that up is worth doing about any host before you hand over your domain.
Are backups included, and can I put one back myself?
A backup is taken daily on every plan, and the restore is yours to run from the panel in minutes — files, databases or both, at three in the morning without waiting on a ticket. Keeping your own copy offsite as well is never a bad habit, and nothing here stops you.
How do I read the mail when I am away from the desk?
Webmail opens in any browser, and every mailbox also speaks IMAP, POP and SMTP — so the mail app on your phone, the client on your desktop and webmail all show the same messages in the same order.
What uptime do you commit to, and who is watching?
We commit to 99.9% uptime and watch it continuously. That figure is an operational target rather than a poster line, and the alerting behind it usually has an engineer on a problem before the first customer notices anything is wrong.
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Packing up and moving host? Take our checklist.
A plain running order for a move nobody notices: what to copy first, how to carry email across without dropping a single message, when to point DNS, and the two slips behind nearly every hour of downtime we get called about.
Get online, with no games at checkout.
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