Using Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs)

Process for Adding an Alternate Domain Name Using the CloudFront Console

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon CloudFront console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/.

2. In the CloudFront console, update your distribution to include your domain name as an alternate domain name in the Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs) field. For more information, see Listing, Viewing, and Updating CloudFront Distributions.

3. In the CloudFront console, on the General tab for your distribution, confirm that the status of your distribution has changed to Deployed. If you try to use an alternate domain name before the updates to your distribution have been deployed, the links you create in the following steps might not work.

4. Using the method provided by your DNS service provider, add a CNAME resource record set to the hosted zone for your domain. This new CNAME resource record set will redirect DNS queries from your domain (for example, www.example.com) to the CloudFront domain name for your distribution (for example, d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net). For more information, see the documentation provided by your DNS service provider.

   Note

   If you're using Route 53 as your DNS service, go to Creating, Changing, and Deleting Resource Record Sets in the Amazon Route 53 Developer Guide for information about how to add a CNAME resource record set.

   Important

   If you already have an existing CNAME record for your domain name, update that resource record set or replace it with a new one that points to the CloudFront domain name for your distribution.

   In addition, confirm that your CNAME resource record set points to your distribution's domain name and not to one of your origin servers.

5. Using dig or a similar tool, confirm that the CNAME resource record set that you created in Step 4 points to the domain name for your distribution. For more information about dig, go to http://www.kloth.net/services/dig.php.

   The following example shows a dig request on the images.example.com domain, as well as the relevant part of the response.

   [prompt]> dig images.example.com
   									
   ; <<> DiG 9.3.3rc2 <<> images.example.com
   ;; global options:  printcmd
   ;; Got answer:
   ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 15917
   ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 9, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 0
   
   ;; QUESTION SECTION:
   ;images.example.com.     IN    A
   									
   ;; ANSWER SECTION:
   images.example.com. 10800 IN  CNAME  d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net.
   ...
   ...

   The line in the Answer Section shows a CNAME resource record set that routes queries for images.example.com to the CloudFront distribution domain name d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net. The CNAME resource record set is configured correctly if the name on the right side of CNAME is the domain name for your CloudFront distribution. If that is any other value, for example, the domain name for your Amazon S3 bucket, then the CNAME resource record set is configured incorrectly. In that case, go back to Step 4 and correct the CNAME record to point to the domain name for your distribution.

6. Test the alternate domain name by creating some test links that use your domain name in the URL instead of the CloudFront domain name for your distribution.

7. In your application, change the links for your objects to use your alternate domain name instead of the domain name of your CloudFront distribution.