Website Hosting Project Summary

Objective

The objective of this project was to configure a publicly accessible, HTTPS-secured static portfolio website hosted on AWS infrastructure. The website showcases professional network engineering and automation projects and is served at the custom domain www.davisdev.net.

Technologies and Services Used

• Amazon S3 – Static website hosting
• Amazon Route 53 – Domain registration and DNS management
• AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) – SSL/TLS certificate provisioning
• Amazon CloudFront – Content delivery network (CDN)
• IAM – Access control for S3 interactions

Process Overview

1. S3 Bucket Configuration

A bucket named www.davisdev.net was created. Static hosting was enabled, and an index.html file was uploaded. A bucket policy was added to allow public s3:GetObject access. Object ownership was enforced, and ACLs were disabled.

2. Domain Registration and DNS

The domain davisdev.net was registered through Route 53. A duplicate hosted zone was mistakenly created, which caused DNS resolution issues. This was resolved by deleting the incorrect hosted zone and confirming the correct NS records were used.

3. HTTPS with ACM

An SSL certificate was requested in the us-east-1 region for both davisdev.net and www.davisdev.net. DNS validation was used, and records were automatically created in Route 53. The certificate was issued successfully.

4. CloudFront Distribution

A CloudFront distribution was created using the S3 static website endpoint as the origin. HTTPS was enabled using the custom SSL certificate. The alternate domain names (CNAMEs) www.davisdev.net and davisdev.net were added to the distribution.

5. DNS Routing

A record conflict in Route 53 was resolved, and alias A records were created pointing www.davisdev.net and davisdev.net to the CloudFront distribution. DNS propagation completed, making the site publicly available over HTTPS.

Challenges and Resolutions

• “Access Denied” error – resolved by updating bucket policy for public read access.
• Multiple hosted zones – resolved by deleting duplicate and correcting NS records.
• Certificate not showing – resolved by requesting in the correct region (us-east-1).
• CloudFront SSL mismatch – resolved by updating the certificate to include both domains.
• DNS caching issues – resolved by clearing browser cache and using incognito mode.

Lessons Learned

• ACM certificates for CloudFront must be in us-east-1.
• Bucket names must match domain names exactly when hosting static sites with custom domains.
• DNS propagation can take up to 72 hours; patience and DNS tools are essential.
• Both root and www domains should be added to SSL certificates and CloudFront.
• Browser DNS caching can obscure fixes; testing in private mode helps.

Outcome

The website is now live at https://www.davisdev.net, served over HTTPS with global reach via CloudFront. The infrastructure is scalable, secure, and well-documented for future updates.