Creating an Amazon CloudFront Distribution

The following steps will instruct you on how to create an Amazon CloudFront Distribution:

1. Firstly, you need to open the Amazon CloudFront console, at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/.
2. Once the CloudFront console opens up, click on the “Create Distribution” button.
3. On the “Create Distribution Wizard” page, click on the default selection “Download”. Subsequently, click on the Continue” button.

1. The “Create Origin” page will now open up. Here, you will need to specify and select the Amazon S3 bucket that you had created earlier.

1. On the “Origin ID” space, let the default value remain, and click “Continue”.
2. Again, on the “Cache Behavior” page, accept the default values. Following this, CloudFront will automatically:
3. Forward all your requests that are using the CloudFront URL for distribution, to the Amazon S3 bucket that you have already specified.
4. Permit all end users to use HTTP or HTTPS to gain access to your objects.
5. Cache all your objects at CloudFront edge locations for a period of 24 hours.
6. Exclude Query string parameters when it forwards requests for objects to your origin.

1. Upon clicking the “Continue” button, the “Distribution Details” page will appear.
2. On the “Distribution Details” page, you will need to specify these following details:
   •  If your distribution uses a CNAME, you are required to enter the CNAME alias that you want to associate with this particular distribution. For this, you must own the specified domain name, and should have created the CNAME record with your registrar. For this particular example, we will leave the “CNAMEs” field blank.
   • If you are using a default root object with your distribution, you will be required to enter the default root object to associate with the distribution. For ex: index.html. For this particular example, we will leave the “Default Root Object” field blank.
   • To enable logging, you will need to select the on option on the “Logging” filed, and then in the “Select Log Bucket” field, you will have to select the Amazon S3 bucket in which you want to save your logs. As an alternative, you can also type the bucket name in the “Specify Log Bucket” field. For this particular example, we will select webapplication. Now, you should type the log file prefix in the “Log Prefix” field. For this particular example, we will be typing webapp-logging.
   • If you want to leave any comments about the distribution, you can do so in the “Comments” field. We will leave it blank for this particular example.
   • For “Distribution Status”, you should select “Enabled”, if you want the distribution to accept end-user requests for content the moment it is deployed. Otherwise, you can select “Disabled”, if you prefer to enable the distribution later. For this particular example, we will select “Enabled”.
3. Click the “Continue” button, and review your distribution settings.
4. If you are completely satisfied with the specified distribution settings, click “Create Distribution”.

It may take a few minutes for the created distribution to get deployed. Current status of the distribution is always displayed under the “Status” tab on the console. If the distribution is not fully deployed yet, the status will show “In Progress”

Note: Even if the distribution’s status is “Deployed”, you are still required to enable the distribution for use, before any end user can retrieve your content.

When your distribution is deployed, you are ready to reference your content with your new Amazon CloudFront domain name or CNAME.