Amazon Route 53 provides basic support for forwarding your domain via ALIAS records. Unfortunately it's missing important features like HTTPS & Analytics.
When you set up a redirect at Amazon Route 53, you still have to take care of the security of both domains yourself. There’s no automatic installment of an SSL certificate. This will result in SSL errors when visiting the domain via HTTPS.
So how do you secure your site with HTTPS when using Amazon?
This can all be done with the help of redirect.pizza. redirect.pizza automatically installs and manages the SSL certificates on your website, to make sure your security is always up to date. And there’s more to benefit from. With redirect.pizza, redirecting your apex domain to the www. version of your domain is done in a few clicks.
If you’d like to set this up, just follow the steps in this walkthrough, and you’ll be good to go!
Step 1: Create a redirect.pizza account
Get started today by creating an account: https://redirect.pizza/register.
Step 2: Add your domain to redirect.pizza
Add your domain you wish to redirect. For our example, we have a domain with Amazon Route 53 'redirect-pizza-forward.xyz'. Add the domain to the 'Source URL' field. We recommend adding www & the apex (non-www).
You see the DNS 'checking' as the detected & required values are different.
Step 3: Navigate to Amazon Route 53
To allow redirecting via redirect.pizza, we need to make a one-time DNS change at Amazon Route 53. Login with your Amazon Route 53 credentials and click on 'Hosted zones'
Click on your domain.
Step 4: Changing the DNS
We are now ready to change the DNS. You will propably see a screen like this:
Before adding the correct DNS records, make sure any existing A record for 'www' and '@' are removed. All other records may remain intact.
Then add the following records.
- Record with Type 'A' Record name '@' and Value '89.106.200.1'
- Record with Type 'CNAME' Record name 'www' and Value 'edge.redirect.pizza.'
Your screen should now look like this:
Step 4: DNS verification in redirect.pizza
The DNS changes have been made! This takes some time before the internet picks up these changes. In most cases, it should be done within a few hours, depending on the TTL set on those records.
redirect.pizza will automatically keep checking the DNS records. If it's detected to be correct, a SSL certificate will be automatically requested & installed.
Closing: redirect.pizza is now set up with automatic HTTPS!
All done! You've successfully set up redirect.pizza with Amazon Route 53. The domain now has full HTTPS support and is redirecting via redirect.pizza. So sit back and relax. You’ll never have to worry about the security of your pages again. Because this means that all URLs are automatically redirected to the HTTPS version of your website. You don't have to worry about any SSL certificates either, as we’ll ensure that they are automatically renewed. This is all part of our Automatic HTTPS feature.
Optional: redirect all pages to the apex or www. version of your website.
After you’ve successfully set up redirect pizza, don’t forget to consider how to make maximum use of our service! There is the possibility, for instance, to redirect all your pages from your apex domain, also called naked or root domain, to the www. version of your domain. (Why would you like to do that? Read more about it in our use case!). It also works vice versa. If you’d prefer to redirect all of your pages from your www. subdomain to your apex domain, it can be done in a few clicks! (Read our support page to learn more).
Consider subscribing to one of our paid plans to help us out! ❤️