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Use an Amazon CloudFront distribution to serve a static website - Amazon Route 53
PrerequisitesStep 1: Route DNS traffic for your domain to your CloudFront distribution

Use an Amazon CloudFront distribution to serve a static website

This topic shows you how to route DNS traffic for your domain to Amazon CloudFront distributions that serve a static website. You create alias records that point your domain and subdomain to your CloudFront distributions.

This topic is part of a static website setup workflow. For general information about routing traffic to a CloudFront distribution, see Routing traffic to an Amazon CloudFront distribution by using your domain name.

After you complete these steps, you have the following resources configured:

  • An SSL/TLS certificate for your domain in AWS Certificate Manager

  • Amazon S3 buckets configured for website hosting and redirect

  • CloudFront distributions for both your root domain and subdomain

Visitors can then reach your website at your custom domain name with HTTPS security from CloudFront.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, complete these steps:

Step 1: Route DNS traffic for your domain to your CloudFront distribution

Now that you have Amazon CloudFront distributions for your website, route DNS traffic for your domain to those distributions. This lets visitors reach your website at your custom domain name.

For more information about routing traffic to CloudFront distributions, see Routing traffic to an Amazon CloudFront distribution by using your domain name.

To route traffic to your website

  1. Open the Route 53 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/route53/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Hosted zones.

    Note

    When you registered your domain, Amazon Route 53 created a hosted zone with the same name. This hosted zone stores information about how Route 53 routes traffic for the domain.

  3. In the list of hosted zones, choose the name of your domain.

  4. Choose Create record.

  5. Specify the following values:

    Record name

    For your subdomain record, enter www.

    Record type

    Choose A ‐ Routes traffic to an IPv4 address and some AWS resources.

    Alias

    Turn on Alias.

    Route traffic to

    Choose Alias to CloudFront distribution.

    Choose the us-east-1 Region.

    Choose your CloudFront distribution. The distribution name matches the value in the Domain name column in the CloudFront console (for example, d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net).

    Evaluate target health

    Accept the default value of No.

  6. Choose Create records.

To add an alias record for your root domain (example.com)

Add an alias record for your root domain too. Point it to the CloudFront distribution that redirects traffic to www.example.com.

  1. Choose Create record.

  2. Specify the following values:

    Record name

    Leave blank to create a record for your root domain.

    Record type

    Choose A ‐ Routes traffic to an IPv4 address and some AWS resources.

    Alias

    Turn on Alias.

    Route traffic to

    Choose Alias to CloudFront distribution.

    Choose the us-east-1 Region.

    Choose your root domain CloudFront distribution.

    Evaluate target health

    Accept the default value of No.

  3. Choose Create records.

Step 2: Test your website

To check that your website works, open a web browser and go to the following URLs:

  • https://www.your-domain-name, for example, www.example.com – Displays the index document in the www.your-domain-name bucket

  • https://your-domain-name for example, example.com – Redirects your request to the www.your-domain-name bucket

In some cases, you might need to clear the cache to see the expected behavior.

For more information about routing internet traffic, see Configuring Amazon Route 53 as your DNS service. To route traffic to AWS resources, see Routing internet traffic to your AWS resources.