Cloud Confusing
Explaining hosting, AWS, Wordpress, static sites, and all manner of cloud solutions.
How To: Cheap WordPress Hosting on AWS with Lightsail
It used to be that hosting WordPress on AWS was a difficult task. You needed to deal with EC2 and the huge AWS management console with its dozens of tools and hundreds of options. Then Amazon introduced the AWS Marketplace and “WordPress powered by BitNami,” which made things easier but left many of the same hurdles in place. Then, finally, Amazon introduces Lightsail, which is basically AWS on easy mode.
Sal October 8th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Bitnami, Digital Ocean, Lightsail, VPS
AWS Lightsail vs Digital Ocean: Cloud VPS Shootout
If you are in the market for an affordable VPS, there is a good chance you are considering Amazon Web Services’s Lightsail and a Digital Ocean droplet. Or perhaps you are already a custom of one and want to learn about other options. Either way, this is a full comparison of the two hosting services that might help you choose between them.
Sal October 6th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Digital Ocean, Lightsail
How to Use Multi-Factor Authentication to Improve AWS Security (And What Amazon Needs to Improve)
The centralization provided by AWS is great — all your web services are in one place with one bill. But if your account is compromised (and you don’t have proper permissioning / IAM) things can go very bad very quickly. So you’re going to want to lock down access to accounts as thoroughly as possible, which means multi-factor authentication of user logins.
And yes, that’s mutli-factor (MFA), not two-factor. Two-factor authentication (TFA or 2FA) is great, but when additional security levels are possible and they can be done almost seamlessly, they make total sense. With the loss of SMS authentication at the end on January 2019 it’s debatable whether Amazon will have multi-factor (as in more than two) or two-factor authentication but we’ll avoid the semantics from this point forward and use the term that seems best in a given scenario.
Sal September 26th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Authentication, IAM, Universal 2nd Factor
Cache Invalidation and Amazon S3
So you have an Amazon S3 hosted site with CloudFront caching in front of it? Nice work — it’s an affordable and highly scalable solution. One downside with this is that the cache, which helps makes your site so fast and cheap to run, is designed to hold on to files, possibly serving an old version to visitors.
That’s normally not a problem (it’s literally the point of a cache), but if you are making a lot of changes to the site and you want visitors to see them as soon as possible, then you will need to invalidate the cache and tell CloudFront to serve the most recent files.
Here is how you can do that…
Sal August 6th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Amazon S3, Cache Invalidation, CloudFront, TTL
Moving a Lightsail Instance to HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt / Certbot
So you have an awesome, affordable new VPS instance — maybe even a WordPress or Drupal installation — hosted on Amazon’s Lightsail. Setting up a Lightsail instance might be quick and easy, but moving it from HTTP to HTTPS isn’t as intuitive as you might expect. This is one of those instances where AWS stops holding your hand and expects you do to some real work of your own. But don’t worry, setting up HTTPS isn’t too tough and, thanks to Let’s Encrypt, it’s free.
Sal May 13th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Great Alternatives to AWS S3 Static Site Hosting
Amazon’s S3 is a great tool for hosting static sites for nearly free (and often times free). Setting up a website in S3 takes just a few minutes, and once it’s there it’s secure, scalable, and affordable. That said, it’s not the tool for everyone — like AWS, S3 has many quirks and it has a real learning curve. Also AWS support is far from free and if you want to do anything non-standard, like URL redirects, there can be many headaches. So here are some of the best alternatives to S3 static site hosting for every user, need, and budget.
Sal May 2nd, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Alternatives To, Hosting, S3, Static Website
How to Redirect to HTTPS Using CloudFront
If you have followed CloudConfusing’s previous guides on hosting a website on S3 and then adding HTTPS to that site, forcing HTTPS is surprisingly easy. The whole process will take about two minutes per site and involves no risk factors, assuming your HTTPS setup is already functioning properly.
Sal April 28th, 2018
Posted In: AWS
Tags: CloudFront, Hosting, HSTS, HTTPS, Lambda, Lambda@Edge
Amazon S3 Website vs REST API Endpoints
Getting to know the S3 endpoints has been one of the worst parts of S3 hosting. In fact, it’s been one of the worst parts of all of AWS since I started my cloud hosting journey years ago. Understanding the Amazon Web Services S3 Website and REST API endpoints has been endlessly confusing and has caused me hours of frustration. Now I have somewhat of handle on it and would like to relay my distilled learnings.
Sal December 24th, 2017
Posted In: AWS
Amazon S3 Hosting and Route 53 DNS – Let the Confusion Begin
In my previous article about hosting a static website on S3, I realize that I may have rushed past the section on DNS. The AWS Static Site Quickstart tool does most of what you need, but upon further review, I can say that it doesn’t do everything and it doesn’t do DNS particularly well. So let’s revisit Route 53 and run through some of what I’ve managed to piece together.
Sal December 18th, 2017
Posted In: AWS
Tags: Amazon S3, DNS, Hosted Zone, Hosting, Static Website
How to Add HTTPS to an S3 Static Site
So you setup build a static website hosted on Amazon S3 and you gave it a custom domain name. What’s next? HTTPS of course! Here’s a guide on how to do it in about 5 minutes. AWS makes SSL both free and easy, but it can be a little confusing the first time around.
Sal December 7th, 2017
Posted In: AWS
Tags: AWS, Certificate Manager, CloudFront, Hosting, HTTPS, Route 53, Static Website