Website Endpoints
When you configure a bucket for website hosting, the website is available via the region-specific website endpoint. Website endpoints are different from the endpoints where you send REST API requests. For more information about the differences between the endpoints, see Key Differences Between the Amazon Website and the REST API Endpoint.
Note
The Amazon S3 website endpoints do not support HTTPS. For information about using HTTPS with an Amazon S3 bucket, see How do I use CloudFront to serve HTTPS requests for my Amazon S3 bucket? and Requiring HTTPS for Communication Between CloudFront and Your Amazon S3 Origin.
The two general forms of an Amazon S3 website endpoint are as follows:
bucket-name.s3-website-region.amazonaws.com
bucket-name.s3-website.region.amazonaws.com
Which form is used for the endpoint depends on what Region the bucket is in. For
example, if your bucket is named example-bucket and it resides in the
US West (Oregon) region, the website is available at the following Amazon S3 website
endpoint:
http://example-bucket.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/
Or, if your bucket is named example-bucket and it resides in the
EU (Frankfurt) region, the website is available at the following Amazon S3 website
endpoint:
http://example-bucket.s3-website.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/
For a list of the Amazon S3 website endpoints by Region, see Amazon Simple Storage Service Website Endpoints in the AWS General Reference.
In order for your customers to access content at the website endpoint, you must make all your content publicly readable. To do so, you can use a bucket policy or an ACL on an object to grant the necessary permissions.
Note
Requester Pays buckets do not allow access through the
website endpoint. Any request to such a bucket receives a 403 Access
Denied response. For more information, see Requester Pays Buckets.
If you have a registered domain, you can add a DNS CNAME entry to point to the Amazon
S3
website endpoint. For example, if you have registered domain,
www.example-bucket.com, you could create a bucket
www.example-bucket.com, and add a DNS CNAME record that points to
www.example-bucket.com.s3-website-<region>.amazonaws.com. All
requests to http://www.example-bucket.com are routed to
www.example-bucket.com.s3-website-<region>.amazonaws.com. For more
information, see Virtual Hosting of Buckets.
Key Differences Between the Amazon Website and the REST API Endpoint
The website endpoint is optimized for access from a web browser. The following table describes the key differences between the Amazon REST API endpoint and the website endpoint.
| Key Difference | REST API Endpoint | Website Endpoint |
|---|---|---|
| Access control |
Supports both public and private content. |
Supports only publicly readable content. |
| Error message handling |
Returns an XML-formatted error response. |
Returns an HTML document. |
| Redirection support |
Not applicable |
Supports both object-level and bucket-level redirects. |
| Requests supported |
Supports all bucket and object operations |
Supports only GET and HEAD requests on objects. |
| Responses to GET and HEAD requests at the root of a bucket | Returns a list of the object keys in the bucket. | Returns the index document that is specified in the website configuration. |
| Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support | Supports SSL connections. | Does not support SSL connections. |
For a list of the Amazon S3 endpoints, see Request Endpoints.
