Getting started with a simple CloudFront distribution

1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console and open the Amazon S3 console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/s3/.

2. Choose Create bucket.

3. For Bucket name, enter a bucket name.

   Important

   For your bucket to work with CloudFront, the name must conform to DNS naming requirements. For more information, see Bucket restrictions and limitations in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.

4. For Region, choose an Amazon Region for your bucket. We recommend that you choose a Region close to you to optimize latency and minimize costs, or you might choose another Region to address regulatory requirements.

5. In the Block Public Access settings for bucket section, clear the check box for Block all public access.

   You must allow public read access to the bucket and files so that CloudFront URLs can serve content from the bucket. However, you can restrict access to specific content by using the CloudFront private content feature. For more information, see Serving private content with signed URLs and signed cookies.

   Select the check box for I acknowledge that the current settings might result in this bucket and the objects within becoming public..

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

7. (Optional) If you don’t have your own website content, or if you just want to experiment with CloudFront before uploading your own content, use the following link to download a simple hello world webpage: hello-world-html.zip.

8. In the Buckets section, choose your new bucket, and then choose Upload.

9. Use the Upload page to add your content to the S3 bucket. If you downloaded the simple hello world webpage, add the index.html file and the css folder (with the style.css file inside it).

10. Choose Additional upload options to expand the section.

11. In the Access control list (ACL) section, select the check box for Read next to Everyone (public access) in the Objects column.

12. Select the check box for I understand the effects of these changes on the specified objects.

13. At the bottom of the page, choose Upload.

    After the upload is complete, you can navigate to the item by using its URL. For example:

    
    https://<bucket name>.s3-<Amazon Region>.amazonaws.com/<object name>

    Replace <bucket name>, <Amazon Region>, and <object name> with the appropriate values based on your bucket and content. If you used the simple hello world website in this procedure, replace <object name> with index.html.

    Note

    If you created the bucket in the US East (N. Virginia) Region (us-east-1), omit the <Amazon Region> portion of the URL. For example:

    
    https://<bucket name>.s3.amazonaws.com/<object name>

    Use the Amazon S3 URL to verify that your content is publicly accessible, but remember that this is not the URL you’ll use to access your content with CloudFront.

To create a CloudFront distribution

1. Open the CloudFront console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/cloudfront/v3/home.

2. Choose Create distribution.

3. Under Origin, for Origin domain, choose the Amazon S3 bucket that you created earlier.

   For the other settings under Origin, accept the default values.

4. For the settings under Default cache behavior, accept the default values.

   For more information about cache behavior options, see Cache behavior settings.

5. For the remainder of Settings, accept the default values.

   For more information about these options, see Distribution settings.

6. At the bottom of the page, choose Create distribution.

7. After CloudFront creates your distribution, the value of the Status column for your distribution changes from In Progress to Deployed. This typically takes a few minutes.

   Record the domain name that CloudFront assigns to your distribution, which appears in the list of distributions. (It also appears on the General tab for a selected distribution.) It looks similar to the following: d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net.