Set up Amazon S3

You'll need an AWS account. AWS screens change often, so use the names below as a guide, and AWS's S3 documentation for the details.

1. Make a bucket#

1. In the AWS console, open S3 and press Create bucket.

2. Pick a name (lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, 3 to 63 characters) and a Region. Note the region's code, like us-east-1 or eu-west-2. VizShot needs it.

3. Leave object ownership on the default. VizShot doesn't use object ACLs.

2. Let people open your links#

Share links only work if the files can be read. The simplest way is to make the bucket's files public:

1. In the bucket's Permissions, edit Block public access and turn off blocking for public bucket policies.

2. Add this bucket policy, with your bucket's name in place of YOUR-BUCKET:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [{
    "Sid": "PublicRead",
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Principal": "*",
    "Action": "s3:GetObject",
    "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR-BUCKET/*"
  }]
}

Prefer to keep the bucket private? Put Amazon CloudFront in front of it and use CloudFront's address (or your own domain) as the link address. That's a bigger job: see put links on your own address.

3. Make an access key that can only do what VizShot needs#

1. Open IAM and create a new user for VizShot.

2. Give it this policy, again with your bucket's name:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [{
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Action": ["s3:PutObject", "s3:DeleteObject"],
    "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR-BUCKET/*"
  }]
}

1. Create an access key for the user. AWS shows the Access key ID and Secret access key once. Copy both.

4. Tell VizShot#

1. Open Settings › Storage and pick Amazon S3.

2. Fill in Region (like us-east-1), Bucket, Access key ID, Secret key, and Link address. For a public bucket, the link address is https://YOUR-BUCKET.s3.YOUR-REGION.amazonaws.com.

3. Press Test connection, then Save.