Have you ever wanted to create your website but didn’t want to pay for hosting costs? Nowadays, everybody has a website to show their work and ideas or share knowledge with the world. It’s easier than ever to create your website and be found on the internet, thanks to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
You might be interested in; How to Set up Windows Print Server and How to Install and Use FreeOffice 2021 on Ubuntu
However, setting up a new website can be pretty tricky without some previous experience. This guide will help you start your first AWS setup to host your websites for 1$ per month! Let’s get started!
For the benefit of those hearing this for the first time, AWS (Amazon Web Services) is Amazon’s cloud computing platform, offering a wide range of services to help you build and scale your website without any effort.
Things Needed to Set Up a Website in AWS for Under 1$ per month
The list is short, but I figured I’d put it front and center to make sure it’s clear from the beginning.
- A working credit/debit card (don’t worry, it’s all free like the title says. But you will need to enter credit card info in order to create an AWS account)
- Front-end code that you can upload and host on AWS. This can be as simple as an HTML document with
<p>Hello World</p> in the body.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to hosting your website on AWS
Step 1: Make an AWS Account
Creating the account is simple and straightforward. It is also few, but only for the first 12 months.
Step 2: Once you’ve signed up for the console, open it, and search for S3, Amazon’s object storage solution.
Step 3: Now click Create bucket.
Step 4: Enter the bucket’s name, specify the region and click Next.
Step 5: Enable versioning, server access logging, tagging, object-level logging, and default encryption. But you don’t need that for now, so just skip these options and click Next.
Step 6: Specify the required permissions. It is important that you select Grant public read access to this bucket in the public permissions drop-down menu. Otherwise, it will be impossible to access the website’s contents located in this bucket.
Step 7: Review the bucket’s properties and permissions, and click Create bucket.
You’ll get a warning from AWS, but don’t worry. They just want to make sure that no one could do this by accident. But this is exactly what you want to do.
Once you’re done, you’ll see your bucket in the list on your S3 console.
Read also; How to Check the BIOS Version On A Windows System and How to Check Secure Boot State on Windows 10
Step 8: Click on your newly created bucket in the list. This will bring you to a page where you can add contents to your bucket and configure its settings.
First, you’ll want to add your project files (mentioned at the beginning) on the “Overview” tab. Remember, these can be the files for any functioning front-end project.
You won’t be able to upload any folders (again, since S3 doesn’t actually have a folder structure). Instead, you’ll need to manually create any folders that you have in your project in S3 and upload your files to them.
Step 9: Next, click on the “Properties” tab.
This is where you’ll tell S3 that you want to use this bucket to host your files.
Just click on the tile that says “Static Website Hosting” and enter the names of your index (required) and error (not required) documents and you’re all done.
Step 10: Next, click on the “Permissions” tab.
You’ll see just below the main tabs that you start off in a subsection called “Access Control List”. This is already configured correctly, since you’ve already said that anyone should be able to read the files hosted in this bucket.
Now you’ll need to click on the “Bucket Policy” subsection. Here, you’ll be prompted to create a JSON object that contains the details of your bucket’s access permission policy.
Step 11: Copy and paste the following bucket policy into the Bucket Policy Editor.
{
"Version":"2012-10-17",
"Statement":[{
"Sid":"PublicReadForGetBucketObjects",
"Effect":"Allow",
"Principal": "*",
"Action":["s3:GetObject"],
"Resource":["arn:aws:s3:::www.thisismysite.com/*"
]
}
]
}
Don’t forget to replace “YOUR-BUCKET-NAME” with… your bucket’s name.
That’s it! You have now deployed a very simple static site on AWS S3.
To access your site, go back to the “Overview” tab on S3 and click on your index document (click on a blank area in the list item, not on the link to the document itself). You’ll get a slide-in menu on the right with a link to your site!
