In this article we will see the steps to redirect naked domain to full domain in AWS. A naked domain is a domain name server (DNS) name that can’t be a canonical name record (CNAME). An example is entechlog.com, without the “www” subdomain. When you create a website which is hosted in S3, CloudFront and Route 53 your naked domain does not get redirected to full domain automatically. To redirect, you need to follow below steps

Step 1: Create a S3 Bucket

• Login into your AWS Management Console and go to Amazon S3
• Create a new bucket for the naked domain say example.com
• Click on the newly created bucket for naked domain, Then navigate to –> Properties –> Static website hosting –> Redirect requests
• Fill Target bucket or domain with the full domain name www.example.com
• Click on Endpoint and validate redirection is happening as expected
• Click on the newly created bucket for naked domain –> Permissions –> Block public access –> - Here make sure Block all public access is ‘On’ since we don’t need any kind of public access to this bucket

Step 2: Create CloudFront distribution

• Copy the endpoint from static webhosting and use it to create a new CloudFront distribution. Remember here “Origin Domain Name” should the endpoint from static webhosting of s3 and not the s3 bucket itself

• Select Redirect HTTP to HTTPS in Viewer Protocol Policy

• Select Yes in Compress Objects Automatically

• Fill Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs) with naked domain name example.com

• Select Custom SSL Certificate (example.com): in SSL Certificate and select the certificate which was created for your domain

• Fill Comment with naked domain name example.com

• Click Create Distribution

• After CloudFront distribution creation is complete, Copy the Domain Name from CloudFront distribution

Step 3: Update Route 53

• Go to Route 53 –> Click Hosted zones –> Click the Hosted zone which we created

• Add a record set for the naked domain name example.com

Now you should be able to access your website using naked domain example.com also. Please note DNS changes will take a few minutes to get reflected.