A Beginner’s Guide to Setup Amazon S3

By in Hosting. Updated on .

You might have heard of itAmazon S3, or perhaps using it already. But for those who have problems scaling your site, looking for solutions or looking for a stable online file hosting, here I’ve written a fairly complete article (I hoped) that give you a basic understanding on Amazon S3, together with guides on getting and account to using it.

For the ease of reading, contents are spitted up in the following sections.

Full guide after jump.

In a Nutshell

Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as Amazon S3 is an online storage facility. It is cheap, fast and easy to setup. And since it’s a service provided by e-commerce giant Amazon, you can be rest-assured whatever you stored at S3 is secured.

Who needs Amazon S3?

In S3, there’s no initial charges. In short – zero setup cost. You only pay for what you utilize. It is utmost suitable for web developers and bloggers, especially those who have the following issues:

Running out of bandwidths

If you are on shared hosting account, any Stumble Upon or Digg effect can easily eat up the entire bandwidth limit for the month. Most of the time, the web host will suspend the account until you have settle the payment for the extra bandwidths consumed. Amazon S3 provides unlimited bandwidth and you’ll be served with any amount of bandwidth your site needs. Charges will be made to credit card and payment can be made at the end of the month.

Better scalability

Amazon S3 using cloud hosting and image serving is relatively fast. Separating them away from normal HTTP request will definitely ease the server load and thus, guarantees better stability.

Paying for more that you actually used

Whether you are on shared hosting, VPS or dedicated server, you pay a lump sum each month (or year) and the amount includes hard disk storage and bandwidth you might not fully make use of. Why pay for more when you can pay only for what you are used.

Store files online

Instead of backing up your files in CD/DVDs to save more hard disk space, here’s another option. Store them online, and you have the option to keep them private or make them public accessible. It’s entire up to you.

Easier files retrieval and sharing

If you store your file online, you can access them anywhere as long as there’s Internet connection. Amazon S3 also allows me to communicate files better with friends, clients, and blog readers.

Next, I’m going to explain on how you can sign up for an Amazon S3 account.

Gettting an Amazon S3 Account

Before we go into signing up an account, I think you should at least know how Amazon S3 charges. Check them out over here, or estimate with a AWS Simple Monthly Calculator. Now if you’re all set, let’s get an Amazon S3 account.

Step 1 – Sign up or login to Amazon

If you have an Amazon account, login, else sign-up for one.

sign up amazon account
Step 2 – Get an Amazon AWS account

Go to aws.amazon.com and sign-up a Amazon Web Services Account.

sign up aws
Step 3 – Opt in for Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Once you are done signing up, you’ll be greeted with a page that says your account has been created and information has been sent to your email. Look for Amazon Simple Storage Service under the list, click it.

select amazon aws
Step 4 – Getting inside Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Once again, you’ll be brought to Amazon S3 introduction page. Read it again if you need, or just skip to signing up an account by clicking on the Sign up For This Web Service. Put in your credit card details and follow the instruction to setup your account.

sign up aws
Step 5 – Know your credentials

Once you’ve successfully sign-up, Amazon will prompt you on your AWS Access Identifiers, which includes your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. Note that Access Key ID and Secret Access Key are as good as your username and password so you should keep them safe.

aws access key

If you have missed the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key notification, click on Your Web Service Account, choose AWS Access Identifiers to retrieve them.

aws access identifiers

Under Your Web Services Account is also where you check the account activities, how much you are going to pay at the end of the month, changing your profile etc. Getting familiar with these pages is necessary.

Now your Amazon S3 account is created and ready to go. Let’s do some uploading.

Using Amazon S3

Your Amazon S3 account starts with a clean root account. On the root is where you create buckets. Bucket is Amazon S3’s terminology for root folder. You can create multiple buckets, and inside buckets is where you place your folders and images.

Amazon S3 releases a set of API and developers around the world releases application that allows your Amazon S3 account to talk to your local computer so you can do all the file uploading, synchronization, back-up , etc. For starters, we’ll be looking at how you can take advantage of S3Fox extension from RJonna (Firefox extension) to connect to your Amazon S3 account and later, we’ll give you a list of alternatives of free and paid applications to connect to Amazon S3.

Using Amazon S3 with Firefox S3Fox

S3Fox is a Firefox plugin, so if you don’t have a Firefox browser installed in your machine, you’ll need to get one. Install S3Fox plugin, have your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key ready, let’s get started.

Step 1 – Launch S3 Organizer

In Firefox, go to Tools, select S3 Organizer.

launch s3 organizer
Step 2 – Set up account

Set up your Amazon S3 account with S3 Organizer. Enter a self explanatory Account Name, your Access Key and Secret Key. Click Add.

setting up s3 organizer
Step 3 – Get connected, create first bucket

Once you’ve entered the correct information, you’ll be brought to your account (which is blank, by default). On the left side of S3 Organizer will be your local machine folders, and Amazon S3 on the right.

Right-click, Create Directory. Anything created on root level will be your buckets. All files and folders will be stored/organized under buckets.

create bucket
Step 4 – Create folders, upload images

Double click into your bucket, create a folder. Inside the folder, upload an image. By default, anything uploaded to your Amazon S3 account will not be accessible by public.

Amazon S3 as Image Hosting

By default, images uploaded to Amazon S3 with S3 Organizers will not be made public. If you intend to share uploaded files with your friends and peers, or if you want to use Amazon S3 to host your website’s images, additional steps will be needed.

Step 1 – Edit image permission

Right-click on one of the image uploaded, select Edit ACL.

edit acl
Step 2 – Make public accessible

To make your image public accessible, make sure Everyone, Authenticated Users and me(Owner) has read access. Follow the settings in the image below. Click on the icon to swap between ticks and crosses.

manage acl
Step 3 – Get image URL

Right-click on any particular image, select Copy URL to Clipboard. Your URL will look something like this: https://assets.hongkiat.com/uploads/10yearsago/amazon_10ya.png

copy url clipboard

Image URL comes in the following fixed format – http://bucket_name.s3.amazonaws.com/foldername/filename.jpg

Amazon S3 Apps & Resources

We’ve been using S3Fox throughout the entire explanation because it’s free and it resides on Firefox browser. But I thought you should also be aware of other applications and various ways out there that provide similar facilities.

  • JungleDisk – Reliable online storage powered by Amazon S3.
    • jungle disk
  • Transmit – FTP/SFTP application for Mac.
    • transmit
  • S3Sync – Consist of S3syncs and S3cmds. Ruby program that allows control of Amazon S3 account with shell commands.
  • Bucket Explorer – User Interfaces for Amazon S3.
  • Backup Manager – Command-line tool for Linux.
  • S3 Backup – Windows desktop application that makes it trivial for everyone to use Amazon’s impressive infrastructure for remote backups and secure online file storage.
  • jets3t – Toolkit for Amazon’s S3 online storage service.
  • Sync2S3 – Synchronizes your files with the Amazon (S3), providing you with a secure and affordable backup solution.
  • SME Storage – Access files from anywhere.

More References

Here’s more online references to help you understand Amazon S3 and its connectivity better.

That’s all! Hope you’ll find this guide useful.

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