Get started with a basic CloudFront distribution

The procedures in this section show you how to use CloudFront to set up a basic configuration that does the following:

• Creates a bucket to use as your distribution origin.

• Stores the original versions of your objects in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket.

• Uses origin access control (OAC) to send authenticated requests to your Amazon S3 origin. OAC sends requests through CloudFront to prevent viewers from accessing your S3 bucket directly. For more information about OAC, see Restrict access to an Amazon Simple Storage Service origin.

• Uses the CloudFront domain name in URLs for your objects (for example, https://d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net/index.html).

• Keeps your objects in CloudFront edge locations for the default duration of 24 hours (the minimum duration is 0 seconds).

Most of these options are customizable. For information about how to customize your CloudFront distribution options, see Create a distribution.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure that you’ve completed the steps in Set up your AWS account.

Create an Amazon S3 bucket

An Amazon S3 bucket is a container for files (objects) or folders. CloudFront can distribute almost any type of file for you when an S3 bucket is the source. For example, CloudFront can distribute text, images, and videos. There is no maximum for the amount of data that you can store on Amazon S3.

For this tutorial, you create an S3 bucket with the provided sample hello world files that you will use to create a basic webpage.

To create a bucket

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon S3 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3/.

2. We recommend that you use our Hello World sample for this Getting started. Download the hello world webpage: hello-world-html.zip. Unzip it and save the css folder and index file in a convenient location, such as the desktop where you are running your browser.

3. Choose Create bucket.

4. Enter a unique Bucket name that conforms to the General purpose buckets naming rules in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.

5. For Region, we recommend choosing an AWS Region that is geographically close to you. (This reduces latency and costs.)

   • Choosing a different Region works, too. You might do this to address regulatory requirements, for example.

6. Leave all other settings at their defaults, and then choose Create bucket.

Upload the content to the bucket

After you create your Amazon S3 bucket, upload the contents of the unzipped hello world file to it. (You downloaded and unzipped this file in Create an Amazon S3 bucket.)

To upload the content to Amazon S3

1. In the General purpose buckets section, choose the name of your new bucket.

2. Choose Upload.

3. On the Upload page, drag the css folder and index file into the drop area.

4. Leave all other settings at their defaults, and then choose Upload.

Create a CloudFront distribution that uses an Amazon S3 origin with OAC

For this tutorial, you will create a CloudFront distribution that uses an Amazon S3 origin with origin access control (OAC). OAC helps you securely send authenticated requests to your Amazon S3 origin. For more information about OAC, see Restrict access to an Amazon Simple Storage Service origin.

To create a CloudFront distribution with an Amazon S3 origin that uses OAC

1. Open the CloudFront console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/v4/home.

2. Choose Create distribution.

3. For Origin, Origin domain, choose the S3 bucket that you created for this tutorial.

4. For Origin, Origin access, select Origin access control settings (recommended).

5. For Origin access control, choose Create new OAC.

6. In the Create new OAC pane, keep the default settings and choose Create.

7. For Web Application Firewall (WAF), select one of the options.

8. For all other sections and settings, accept the default values. For more information about these options, see Distribution settings.

9. Choose Create distribution.

10. In The S3 bucket policy needs to be updated banner, read the message and choose Copy policy.

11. In the same banner, choose the link to Go to S3 bucket permissions to update policy. (This takes you to your bucket detail page in the Amazon S3 console.)

12. For Bucket policy, choose Edit.

13. In the Edit statement field, paste the policy that you copied in step 10.

14. Choose Save changes.

15. Return to the CloudFront console and review the Details section for your new distribution. When your distribution is done deploying, the Last modified field changes from Deploying to a date and time.

16. Record the domain name that CloudFront assigns to your distribution. It looks similar to the following: d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net.

Before using the distribution and S3 bucket from this tutorial in a production environment, make sure to configure it to meet your specific needs. For information about configuring access in a production environment, see Configure secure access and restrict access to content.

Access your content through CloudFront

To access your content through CloudFront, combine the domain name for your CloudFront distribution with the main page for your content. (You recorded your distribution domain name in Create a CloudFront distribution that uses an Amazon S3 origin with OAC.)

• Your distribution domain name might look like this: d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net.

• The path to the main page of a website is typically /index.html.

Therefore, the URL to access your content through CloudFront might look like this:

https://d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net/index.html.

If you followed the previous steps and used the hello world webpage, you should see a webpage that says Hello world!.

When you upload more content to this S3 bucket, you can access the content through CloudFront by combining the CloudFront distribution domain name with the path to the object in the S3 bucket. For example, if you upload a new file named new-page.html to the root of your S3 bucket, the URL looks like this:

https://d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net/new-page.html.

Clean up

If you created your distribution and S3 bucket only as a learning exercise, delete them so that you no longer accrue charges. Delete the distribution first. For more information, see the following links:

• Delete a distribution

• Deleting a bucket

Enhance your basic distribution

This Get started tutorial provides a minimal framework for creating a distribution. We recommend that you explore the following enhancements:

• By default, the files (objects) in the Amazon S3 bucket are set up as private. Only the AWS account that created the bucket has permission to read or write the files. If you want to allow anyone to access the files in your Amazon S3 bucket using CloudFront URLs, you must grant public read permissions to the objects.

• You can use the CloudFront private content feature to restrict access to the content in the Amazon S3 buckets. For more information about distributing private content, see Serve private content with signed URLs and signed cookies.

• You can configure your CloudFront distribution to use a custom domain name (for example, www.example.com instead of d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net). For more information, see Use custom URLs.

• This tutorial uses an Amazon S3 origin with origin access control (OAC). However, you can't use OAC if your origin is an S3 bucket configured as a website endpoint. If that's the case, you must set up your bucket with CloudFront as a custom origin. For more information, see Use an Amazon S3 bucket that's configured as a website endpoint. For more information about OAC, see Restrict access to an Amazon Simple Storage Service origin.