Fairly often we purchase a new domain or decommission an existing one and need to redirect all queries to it to a specific URL on a wholly different domain and website. Practically all services where you can register domain like GoDaddy, name.com and Namecheap offer a redirect function, but nearly all fail to work if the user attempts to go to a HTTPS URL on the domain you are redirecting.

If you’re already making use of Amazon AWS Cloud, a very low cost and foolproof solution is to utilize Amazon S3’s static website hosting feature along with Amazon CloudFront to handle the redirect:

1. Create a new Amazon S3 bucket (eg. domain-redirect-olddomaincom) with ACLs disabled, the checkbox to block all public access unchecked (as we wish to allow public access) and bucket versioning disabled; create the bucket.
2. Edit the newly created S3 bucket; under the Properties tab, edit the Static Website Hosting properties.
3. In the Static Website Hosting properties page:
   • Static website hosting: Enable
   • Hosting type: Host a static website
   • Index document: index.html
   • Redirection rules: Copy/paste the following, with the appropriate changes made to the values of HostName and ReplaceKeyPrefixWith:

     [
         {
             "Redirect": {
                 "HostName": "www.newdomain.com",
                 "HttpRedirectCode": "301",
                 "Protocol": "https",
                 "ReplaceKeyPrefixWith": "path/to/redirect/to/"
             }
         }
     ]

4. Hit the Save Changes button to finalize the redirect using the S3 bucket; it should work immediately and allow you to test it via the Bucket Website Endpoint URL shown on the page.
5. Create a new Amazon CloudFront distribution, making sure to:
   1. Create Origin: Ensure that it points to the static website endpoint of your new S3 bucket (eg. domain-redirect-olddomaincom.s3-website.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com, not the default of domain-redirect-olddomaincom.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com)
   2. Alternate domain name (CNAME): Enter all versions of the domain you wish to be handled and redirected (eg. olddomain.com and www.olddomain.com)
   3. Custom SSL certificate: Request a certificate that handles the domains you entered above; this is the (free) option that allows your newly set up domain redirect to respond properly to both HTTP and HTTPS requests
6. Add the Amazon CloudFront domain (eg. d1gyvh82u10kd6.cloudfront.net) to your domain name’s DNS records for the root and subdomains you wish to redirect.

You’re done! While a bit long-winded as a process, this appears to be the cheapest and most foolproof way to set up a domain redirect for the long term.