Introduction
AWS Amplify is an easy to use and powerful app hosting solution. AWS Amplify defines a workflow to deployment integration with flexible and automatic resource management.
For a quick learn from a tiny project by reading Effective Jekyll: Hosting Websites on AWS Amplify.
Tips in practice but not mentioned in its official documents helps you work more efficiently.
Suppose you have a AWS account, or you can follow the AWS official guide to Create and activate a new Amazon Web Services account.
Table of Contents
- Return 404 Status Code for 404 Page
- Use Environment Variable JEKYLL_ENV in Production
- Remove Github Pages Plugin in Gemfile
- Correct Redirect Settings
Return 404 Status Code for 404 Page
Edit your Rewrites and redirects settings.
Change the Type of your 404 route to
404(Rewrite).
Notes here
The type of your 404 route is set to
404(Redirect)by default in AWS Amplify, so you need to change it to404(Rewrite)manually.
Use Environment Variable JEKYLL_ENV in Production
People want some code running in production only, but not in development, for example, people only want to include google-analytics.html and google-adsense.html in production environment to avoid dirty data when they are debugging.
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
{% raw %}
{%- seo -%}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ "/assets/main.css" | relative_url }}">
{%- feed_meta -%}
{%- if jekyll.environment == 'production' -%}
{%- include google-analytics.html -%}
{%- include google-adsense.html -%}
{%- endif -%}
{% endraw %}
</head>
The key line is:
{% raw %}{%- if jekyll.environment == 'production' -%}{% endraw %}
This line means the following codes will be compiled the environment variable JEKYLL_ENV is set to production only. As the Jekyll official document says, the jekyll.environment is set to development by default. So if you want to build in production mode, you need to set the environment variable JEKYLL_ENV to production before you run the build command like this.
Save and deploy your again, then it works.
Notes here: JEKYLL_ENV=production must lead the command, otherwise the build command can not read JEKYLL_ENV.
Remove Github Pages Plugin in Gemfile
Github Pages Plugin is always started in safe mode and the plugin_dir is a random string. So your plugins in plugin-dir will be never loaded.
Remove Github Pages Plugin in Gemfile:
# If you want to use GitHub Pages, remove the "gem "jekyll"" above and
# uncomment the line below. To upgrade, run `bundle update github-pages`.
# gem "github-pages", group: :jekyll_plugins
Notes here: No warning or information when Jekyll is running in safe mode, so people always waste much time here.
Correct Redirect Settings
People need to redirect requests in two scenarios:
Redirect to the only main domain: A website has only one domain, e.g. www.miguoliang.com is the main domain of my blog, and miguoliang.com redirects to www.miguoliang.com permanently. People need to redirect request to the main domain permanently, otherwise:
- Search Engine will be confused when it crawls your website, because it found there was a same page in its database.
- If you redirects request not permanently, just temporary, your website will get a low speed on opening. Because it will take much more time on multi redirects.
Redirect HTTP to HTTPS: Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. People need to redirect HTTP request to HTTPS, not only because of security, but also because of SEO.
People need to correct their redirect settings like this:
