I wanted to host indie-org.sh as simply as possible, so I tried S3. I had already registered the domain name with Pair Domains (I highly recommend them), so all I needed to do was setup an S3 bucket to host the site, and setup Route 53 to point to it, right? In the event, it was quite easy… once I knew how. An essential part of developing that knowledge is adding "-site:amazon.com" to your search phrases– the AWS docs were worse than useless.

The process of setting-up the bucket was pretty straightforward, and well-documented– they even suggest the Policy you'll need to attach to your bucket to make it available on the web. The problems began in setting-up Route 53. Lots of docs on how to register a domain with Route 53, very little on how to bring your own (I know, I know).

The first step is well-documented here, by a gentleman named Milad Rezaeighale. The trick is to setup a hosted zone with the same name as your domain name; once that's done check the NS (Name Server) record AWS creates for you– it will have a few name servers listed there. I updated my domain name with Pair Domains to use them.

The next step I had to figure-out via experimentation. You need to create a record in your new hosted zone aliased to your bucket, but for it to work, you need to get your bucket to show-up in the list of available Aliases. To be honest, I still don't know what I did to make that happen (thank you, AWS), but it only happened when I named my bucket www.indie-org.sh (not indie-org.sh. At that point, I was able to createa few A records pointing to it.

The key here is that you shouldn't have to enter the bucket endpoint manually– it should show-up on its own.

06/07/23 07:23