Web applications are crucial to business success as they are platforms where people buy and sell products and services. A thriving business, therefore, needs to build a website that is not only visually appealing, but also capable of handling spikes in user traffic. The web hosting platform needs to be secure and redundant, so as to protect sensitive business information from interception by cyber attackers and hackers. The website hosting should also support leading web technologies. Amazon Web Services offers many features and tools to build a websites, that are easy to scale, equipped with many advanced features and disaster recovery mechanisms to recover crucial business data. Continuing the discussion, the blog post is a step-by-step- guide to hosting a web application on Amazon Web Services. Take a look.
Guide to hosting a web application on Amazon Web Services –
1. Sign Up for AWS and Create IAM Users
The first step is signing-up for a Amazon Web Services account. Once you sign up for an AWS account, you get automatic access to hosting services and will be charged for only the services that you use. If you already have an AWS account, skip this step and go straight to the creation of IAM (Identity and Access Management) users. All services within the scope of AWS require valid credentials to gain access, which ensures that only authorized users are able to access the resources of the service. According to AWS recommendations, IAM roles are a must to restrict unauthorized access to the resources. An administrator, therefore, should create an IAM user and grant administrative permissions so that the user can access AWS services through a special URL.
2. Create Buckets for the Website
A bucket can be considered as a file folder on the internet that has its unique naming convention over the entire web. IT administrators can use Amazon Simple Storage Service, or Amazon S3, to be precise, to store all content such as CSS files, HTML, and Javascript pages that are the building blocks for your website. Amazon S3 is highly secure and available, and is also capable of storing multiple copies of redundant data. If you intend to attach a domain name to the website, you need to book the domain first before going ahead with the creation of buckets. This is because your bucket name should be the same as the domain name, so that Amazon S3 can resolve the host headers sent by web browsers, whenever someone requests content from your website.
3. Configure Buckets
After the bucket creation is over, the next step is to configure the root domain buckets, so that normal users can access the website data on the browser. When buckets are created, only the administrator has the default permissions to access them and their contents in such a way that the data is not accidentally exposed to unauthorised users. The objective of the exercise is creating a website to get traction from visitors and sell products and services. For that to happen, you have to manually configure the buckets and add special permissions for visitors to your website. AWS hosting also allows you to track the visitors accessing your website, including their IP address and the in-out traffic, through the bucket. There are no charges to enable logging on the bucket, but you may need to pay more to access the information contained in the bucket.
4. Deploy the Web Application
Now that bucket creation and configuration are successfully accomplished, the penultimate step is to deploy the web application. Typical tasks that are required in this step include creation of an index and custom error document, uploading necessary files to the bucket, configuring the bucket as a website, setting up a redirect, and finally the most important step, which is testing the website to check for any bugs or tune ups that may be required. Choosing a redirect also has many advantages as you can maintain a single version of website files in Amazon S3, which supports the root and sub-domains of the web address.
5. Speed Up the Website
Though optional, you can use Amazon Cloudfront to improve the performance of the deployed website or web application. CloudFront ensures that copies of your website content are available on data centers around the world, called edge locations, and once a visitor requests access, the nearest data center entertains the request, leading to faster download times and improved performance. The feature consistently checks the origin server for a newer version of the content, and once available, it gets replicated or passed on to the nearest edge location. This step is primarily concerned with optimising website performance, which involves three steps – creation of cloudfront distribution, updating the record sets for domains and subdomains, and checking the log files.
The Bottom Line
Developing high quality web applications takes great skill and cutting-edge technologies. Businesses face the challenge of deploying solutions that can quickly cater to real time web requests and are fault-tolerant, cost-effective, and easy to manage. Amazon Web Services meets all requirements for your business, as deployed web applications are hosted on the cloud, and therefore, immunised from failures, as compared with on-premise systems. If you are looking for reliable web hosting company in India, look no further than i2k2 Networks. We leverage more than a decade of IT experience and our consultants are ideally positioned to meet the expectations and requirements of building an ideal business website. To learn more about AWS and how our website hosting and development services can help you, fill out our contact form. You can also call us at +91-120-466 3031.