# Website endpoints When you configure your bucket as a static website, the website is available at the Amazon Web Services Region-specific website endpoint of the bucket. 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 a website endpoint and a REST API endpoint](#WebsiteRestEndpointDiff). Depending on your Region, your Amazon S3 website endpoint follows one of these two formats. + **s3-website dash (-) Region** ‐ `http://bucket-name.s3-website-Region.amazonaws.com.cn` + **s3-website dot (.) Region** ‐ `http://bucket-name.s3-website.Region.amazonaws.com.cn` These URLs return the default index document that you configure for the website. For a complete list of Amazon S3 website endpoints, see [Amazon S3 Website Endpoints](https://docs.amazonaws.cn/general/latest/gr/s3.html#s3_website_region_endpoints). **Note** To augment the security of your Amazon S3 static websites, the Amazon S3 website endpoint domains (for example, *s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com* or *s3-website.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com*) are registered in the [Public Suffix List (PSL)](https://publicsuffix.org/). For further security, we recommend that you use cookies with a `__Host-` prefix if you ever need to set sensitive cookies in the domain name for your Amazon S3 static websites. This practice will help to defend your domain against cross-site request forgery attempts (CSRF). For more information see the [Set-Cookie](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Set-Cookie#cookie_prefixes) page in the Mozilla Developer Network. If you want your website to be public, you must make all your content publicly readable for your customers to be able to access it at the website endpoint. For more information, see [Setting permissions for website access](WebsiteAccessPermissionsReqd.md). **Important** Amazon S3 website endpoints do not support HTTPS or access points. If you want to use HTTPS, you can do one of the following: (Recommended) Use [Amazon Amplify Hosting](https://docs.amazonaws.cn//amplify/latest/userguide/welcome.html.html) to host static website content stored on S3. Amplify Hosting is a fully managed service that makes it easy to deploy your websites on a globally available content delivery network (CDN) powered by Amazon CloudFront, allowing secure static website hosting. With Amazon Amplify Hosting, you can select the location of your objects within your general purpose bucket, deploy your content to a managed CDN, and generate a public HTTPS URL for your website to be accessible anywhere. For more information about Amplify Hosting, see [Deploying a static website to Amazon Amplify Hosting from an S3 general purpose bucket](https://docs.amazonaws.cn//AmazonS3/latest/userguide/website-hosting-amplify) and [Deploying a static website from S3 using the Amplify console](https://docs.amazonaws.cn//amplify/latest/userguide/deploy--from-amplify-console.html) in the *Amazon Amplify Console User Guide*. Use Amazon CloudFront to serve a static website hosted on Amazon S3. For more information, see [How do I use CloudFront to serve HTTPS requests for my Amazon S3 bucket?](http://www.amazonaws.cn/support-plans/knowledge-center/cloudfront-https-requests-s3) To use HTTPS with a custom domain, see [Configuring a static website using a custom domain registered with Route 53](https://docs.amazonaws.cn/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/website-hosting-custom-domain-walkthrough.html). Requester Pays buckets do not allow access through a website endpoint. Any request to such a bucket receives a 403 Access Denied response. For more information, see [Using Requester Pays general purpose buckets for storage transfers and usage](RequesterPaysBuckets.md). **Topics** + [ ## Website endpoint examples ](#website-endpoint-examples) + [ ## Adding a DNS CNAME ](#website-endpoint-dns-cname) + [ ## Using a custom domain with Route 53 ](#custom-domain-s3-endpoint) + [ ## Key differences between a website endpoint and a REST API endpoint ](#WebsiteRestEndpointDiff) ## Website endpoint examples The following examples show how you can access an Amazon S3 bucket that is configured as a static website. **Example — Requesting an object at the root level** To request a specific object that is stored at the root level in the bucket, use the following URL structure. ``` http://bucket-name.s3-website.Region.amazonaws.com.cn/object-name ``` For example, the following URL requests the `photo.jpg` object that is stored at the root level in the bucket. ``` http://example-bucket.s3-website.us-west-2.amazonaws.com.cn/photo.jpg ``` **Example — Requesting an object in a prefix** To request an object that is stored in a folder in your bucket, use this URL structure. ``` http://bucket-name.s3-website.Region.amazonaws.com.cn/folder-name/object-name ``` The following URL requests the `docs/doc1.html` object in your bucket. ``` http://example-bucket.s3-website.us-west-2.amazonaws.com.cn/docs/doc1.html ``` ## Adding a DNS CNAME 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 registered the 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.cn`. All requests to `http://www.example-bucket.com` are routed to `www.example-bucket.com.s3-website.Region.amazonaws.com.cn`. For more information, see [Customizing Amazon S3 URLs with CNAME records](VirtualHosting.md#VirtualHostingCustomURLs). ## Using a custom domain with Route 53 Instead of accessing the website using an Amazon S3 website endpoint, you can use your own domain registered with Amazon Route 53 to serve your content—for example, `example.com`. You can use Amazon S3 with Route 53 to host a website at the root domain. For example, if you have the root domain `example.com` and you host your website on Amazon S3, your website visitors can access the site from their browser by entering either `http://www.example.com` or `http://example.com`. For an example walkthrough, see [Tutorial: Configuring a static website using a custom domain registered with Route 53](website-hosting-custom-domain-walkthrough.md). ## Key differences between a website endpoint and a REST API endpoint An Amazon S3 website endpoint is optimized for access from a web browser. The following table summarizes the key differences between a REST API endpoint and a 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 complete list of Amazon S3 endpoints, see [Amazon S3 endpoints and quotas](https://docs.amazonaws.cn/general/latest/gr/s3.html) in the *Amazon Web Services General Reference*.