Route your Subdomain to an Amazon S3 Bucket:

1. Identify the exact domain name you want to forward to Amazon S3. S3 is not a web server, so I would not recommend forwarding your entire domain there, but rather a sub-domain. The sub-domain I’m going to use is the actual one I setup: cdn.kapilgoyal.com

2. Create a new “bucket” by clicking the “create bucket” icon. Name the bucket exactly what your sub-domain name is.

• Example bucket name: cdn.kapilgoyal.com
• Note: you must use a unique bucket name; you won’t be able to create bucket if the name is already being used by someone else, even if in another separate account.

3. Now comes the tricky part: modifying your DNS server settings. The procedures on how to do this vary by host and software system, but are the general steps:

• Logon to your web host control panel and select “Manage DNS Server Settings” or similar
• Create a new CNAME entry for your domain. For my example of cdn.kapilgoyal.com, the entry was:
• Name: cdn
• Type: CNAME
• Value: s3.amazonaws.com.
• (If you are an European users, use s3-external-3.amazonaws.com. instead)
• And yes, the dot at the end of “s3.amazonaws.com.” is correct, at least for me. Look at your other entries to figure out what your should enter.

4. Now comes the hardest part: waiting. It took about 2 hours for my subdomain to be recognized by AmazonAWS.

5. Open the subdomain name in your browser. You should now be able to access your files through any of 3 urls:

• subdomain.domain.com (as long as the full bucket name is the same as the full subdomain name i.e. mysubdomain.mydomain.com, it is not necessary to specify the bucket name again at the end of the url)
• your_bucket_name.s3.amazonaws.com (i.e. mysubdomain.mydomain.com.s3.amazonaws.com)
• s3.amazonaws.com/your_bucket_name (i.e. s3.amazonaws.com/mysubdomain.mydomain.com)