Welcome to the World of Amazon CloudFront!

As the world moves more and more online, it can be quite perplexing and overwhelming to think about website speed and performance. In attracting and retaining website visitors, website speed and performance have become critical factors. But don’t worry, we have just the solution for you – Amazon CloudFront!

Step 1: Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution

The first step in setting up Amazon CloudFront with WordPress is to create a distribution. It’s quite a burly process, so be prepared!

• Login to the AWS Management Console
• Navigate to the Amazon CloudFront service
• Click on the “Create Distribution” button to start the process.
• Prepare to choose between two types of distributions: Web and RTMP. Choose “web” and click on “Get Started.”

Step 2: Add a CNAME record to your DNS service

Now that you have created your CloudFront distribution, it’s time for another burly process! You need to add a CNAME record to your DNS service. What’s that, you ask? It’s a type of DNS record that maps a domain name to another domain name. Here’s what you need to do:

• Login to your domain registrar’s website or access your DNS records through your hosting provider’s control panel.
• Create a new CNAME record
• Enter the following details:
  • Name: Enter the name you want to use for your CNAME. For example, “cdn.yourdomain.com”
  • Value: Enter your CloudFront distribution’s domain name. You can find this under the “Domain Name” field in your CloudFront distribution settings.
• Save your changes and wait for the DNS changes to propagate (this usually takes a few hours).

Step 3: Install the Amazon CloudFront plugin for WordPress

This is where things get really exciting! You’re going to install the Amazon CloudFront plugin – this plugin will automatically rewrite your website’s URLs to point to your CloudFront distribution, ensuring that your visitors are always accessing your website through the CDN. How awesome is that?

• Navigate to your WordPress admin area
• Go to “Plugins” > “Add New”
• Search for “Amazon CloudFront” and click on “Install Now”
• Once the plugin is installed, click on “Activate” to activate it

Step 4: Configure the Amazon CloudFront plugin

Are you ready for more excitement? In this step, you’ll configure the Amazon CloudFront plugin to work with your CloudFront distribution (oh, the suspense!).

• Go to “Settings” > “Amazon Web Services” in your WordPress admin area
• Enter your AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key in the appropriate fields. These can be found in your AWS account dashboard.
• Next, enter your CloudFront distribution’s domain name in the “Distribution Domain Name” field.
• You can also choose to enable or disable the plugin’s various features, such as “TLS Version” and “Enable SSL Verification” depending on your needs.
• Once you have configured the plugin, click on “Save Changes” to save your settings.

Step 5: Test your CloudFront distribution

It’s time for the final step – testing your CloudFront distribution to make sure everything is working as it should! This is where you’ll get to see the difference in your website’s load time before and after implementing Amazon CloudFront.

• Open your website in your browser and check the page source. You should see that all your website’s URLs are now pointing to your CloudFront distribution.
• You can also use a website speed testing tool like Pingdom or GTmetrix to check your website’s load time after you’ve implemented Amazon CloudFront.

Conclusion

Implementing Amazon CloudFront with WordPress can be quite a daunting process, but it’s well worth the effort in the end. With Amazon CloudFront, you can significantly improve your website’s performance, reduce loading times, and provide a better experience for your website visitors. So, what are you waiting for? Give it a try today!