Amazon Route 53

Route 53 provides a DNS service where you can buy and host your site's domain. You may prefer to buy your domain from another seller, like GoDaddy or Namecheap, but if you want to serve your serverless frontend using AWS services, you need to use Route 53 to host it.

When you configure a subdomain (like in mysubdomain.mydomain.com), you can set an A record (IP address) or CNAME (alias to another address), but the root domain (mydomain.com) requires an A record. If you host your frontend using S3, you receive an endpoint to set a CNAME record, but you don't get a fixed IP to set an A record. Since Route 53 is an AWS service, it accepts an S3 endpoint in the A record option and solves this issue.

Configuring your domain requires a simple setup, but it often confuses web developers who are not used to DNS management. This service will receive more attention later, specifically in Chapter 4, Hosting the Website.