How To Host A Static Website On AWS S3- Amazon Web Services

Key takeaways:

• For what type of websites, AWS S3 is suitable?
• What are the benefits of AWS S3?
• How to host a website on AWS S3?

The primary task for any website owner is to decide where to host the website (static or dynamic). There are two options available for this. First, buy any virtual server, or second, consult a popular web hosting company. The latter is both economical and convenient to use. 

Just pay what the company is asking for hosting, and relax. Except for these two, many of the website owners don’t know about the third way, i.e. AWS S3 hosting. Here, AWS stands for Amazon Web Services. It’s more helpful and worth using if your website is static.  So, in this blog, I will disclose everything about hosting a static website over AWS S3. So, let’s start.

For What Type of Websites AWS S3 is Suitable? 

AWS S3 is suitable for only static websites. A website is static if it’s simple, and nothing is happening at the back end. This is because AWS S3 doesn’t support server-side components like PHP, JSP, or ASP.NET. An example of a static site is a business site where the user will only find the contact information. 

What are The Benefits of Hosting a Website Over AWS S3?

The following are the key benefits of using AWS S3 for your website hosting. These are-

1. It manages everything on its own. So, you need not worry about anything like software.
2. It is very cheap to start with at the beginning.
3. AWS S3 has great integration with CloudFront.
4. Setting up your website is like blinking your eye.

So, due to these benefits among many others, it’s a great deal to host with AWS S3.

Requirements for Hosting a Static Website on AWS S3

Although there are not such many strange requirements to host your website on AWS S3, some mandatory ones are:

1. An AWS account.
2. Knowledge of operating the S3 service.
3. A registered domain.
4. Access to the panel allows you to manage your domain’s records.
5. A fully prepared website ready for hosting.

So, these are the basic requirements for hosting your static website on AWS S3. Now, it’s the right time to discover the hosting process on AWS S3.

A Quick Guide on Hosting a Static Website on AWS S3

In this section, I will show you how to host a simple HTML website on AWS S3.  So, let’s get started!

1. Creating an S3 Bucket

First, create an S3 bucket. It is where you will put all your files and website. Name the bucket after your domain name. After naming, it’s time to configure the bucket. It is advisable to turn on the object versioning. It is useful in case you wish to restore any previous image or file. 

Then, it’s time to unlock the public ACLs for objects. It is important to do so because only then your site will go publicly visible. As the bucket is ready, you can now put your files into it. Again, make sure that the files you upload are made public and not private. In the next step, you will have the option to select the storage class. For now, leave it to Standard.

2. Enabling Static Website Hosting

After creating a bucket, it’s the right time to enable website hosting. So, go to your bucket’s properties. There, you will find this option, static website hosting. Enable it. Now, enter the name of your website’s “core” file. Usually, it is “index.html”. If you have a file to be shown in the case of an error, just define it also in the bucket. 

Further, it’s worth it to save the endpoint displayed above at this point. This is an important step while hosting the website. If you’ve done all the above steps correctly, your website will appear as soon as you enter the endpoint into the browser. 

3. Setting Up The Website’s DNS Records

After the above two steps, your website must go online (if all the steps go correct at your end). But you won’t be entering a big URL to access your site on the browser. Right? If you want to access your site using its domain name, it is important to set up its DNS records. DNS stands for Domain Name System. 

You can use Cloudflare to add and manage the records. For this, do the below-mentioned steps.

1. Remove all the existing records that point your site’s domain name to other domains/IP addresses.
2. Add the CNAME records.

Now, just wait for the DNS records to get active. Once done, you can access your website on the browser by entering its domain name. With this, you have enabled the AWS S3 hosting for your website.

Summary 

So, this concludes the post. Today, if you own a static website, then hosting it over AWS S3 is an ideal choice. It offers various benefits listed above.  Further, going by the trend, most of the static websites in the coming future will be posted here only. So, what are you waiting for? Try AWS S3 today.

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