Dreamhost

Prerequisites

• Sign up for a domain on Dreamhost
• Make sure your domain is set to DNS Only in the Dreamhost console.
• Deploy an app with Architect and make note of the staging and production URLs
• Make sure your app is deployed to us-east-1
• Ensure the @app name is uniquely named after the domain.

Step 1: setup SSL certificates with AWS Certificate Manager

In this step we will request a certificate from Amazon for our domain.

• Open up AWS Certificate Manager in the AWS Console in us-east-1 (region is required!)
• Click Request a certificate and then Request a public certificate
• Ensure example.com and *.example.com for sub domains to work
• Choose DNS validation and click Next
• Add any tags and confirm the request
• Open up Dreamhost backend and click Manage Domains
• Click the DNS link under your domain to add custom DNS records
• Create CNAME records of both issued certificates
• Wait until they change from pending to success

Step 2: setup CloudFront

Generate a CloudFront distribution with the certificate from step 1.

• Sign into AWS CloudFront in the AWS Console
• Click Create Distribution and then click Get Started
• Open API Gateway and make note of the Invoke URL.
• Enter the URL from API Gateway in Origin Domain Name
• Set Origin Protocol Policy to Match Viewer
• Add the Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs) that you will be using. ex. example.com.
• Set Viewer Protocol Policy to Redirect HTTP to HTTPS
• Set Allowed HTTP Methods to GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, POST, PATCH, DELETE
• Set Compress Objects Automatically to Yes
• Set SSL Certificate to Custom SSL Certificate and select the cert from step 1
• Click Create Distribution
• Repeat for staging domain.

Step 3: configure the domain Alias in Dreamhost

Add Alias and CNAME records to DNS.

• Sign into Dreamhost
• Navigate to the domain by clicking Manage Domains in the sidebar.
• Click DNS under the domain
• Click Add Record
• Use record type Alias for the root domain.
  • Leave Host input blank and add the CloudFront domain that was created in step 2 to the Points to input.
• Use record type CNAME for the staging domain.
  • Add the word staging to the Host input and add the CloudFront domain that was created in step 2 to the Points to input.
• Click Add records

Conclusion

Now we’re done! You can check to see if your domains are online with the DNS checker tool provided by Dreamhost. You can also use this DNS Checker tool.