Amazon's Simple Storage Service∞ (S3) is an easy way to run a small hosting account while serving large amounts of static content. A Small Orange∞, our gentle guides, are not hit with massive traffic spikes, and you're not crapping on your neighbors on the shared server. It takes only minor tweaking to get a subdomain pointed at your S3 account, and these few points should help you out. I am not an employee of Amazon.com and I am not making any money off their service, this is here to save the help desk folks from the same hassle I put them through. Note also that this service is a competitor to A Small Orange's ASO Extreme∞ package, using it may be bad karma. Like I said, the advice is offered to minimize the effort they have to go through to deal with cheapskates like me.

First, activate your amazon web services account.

Second, choose a subdomain (e.g. "static") and create a bucket with the same name as your whole domain (e.g. "static.yourdomain.org", no slashes, no quotes, no extra dots). There are lots of tools for creating buckets, you'll have to go to their site to find technical details on logging, permission, and uploading.

Third, now that you've created your account and a public readable bucket named the same as your subdomain + site, it is accessible from anywhere on the web. For example, if subdomain = "static", full domain name = "static.yourdomain.org" and S3 bucket = "static.yourdomain.org", it can be accessed from anywhere at http://s3.amazonaws.com/static.yourdomain.org/∞ . If you already have a headache, stop here because the rest is just icing.

Fourth, submit a help desk ticket to have your DNS record altered to reflect the subdomain redirection, for example:


Note the trailing dot after s3.amazonaws.com. , that is key. Replace "static" with the subdomain you chose for your own site.

Fifth, wait a few hours and then go get 'em. If, for example, you created a folder named 'images' that contained a file name 'picture.png' (in S3 terminology, a key 'images/picture.png' containing the data for the image) you can reach it at http://s3.amazonaws.com/static.yourdomain.com/images/picture.png∞ OR at http://static.yourdomain.com/images/picture.png∞

Sixth, go crazy and develop new apps that take advantage of flexible, pay-as-you-go web storage and be "The Next YouTube."

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All information presented is valid as of March 23, 2007, but the service is still beta and has undergone changes in the past that effected the DNS settings I'm suggesting, don't put all your eggs in one basket.