Amazon CloudFront Now Supports Customized Error Responses

Posted on: Sep 23, 2013

We’re excited to let you know that we’ve added two new features that allow to you to configure how CloudFront handles error responses for your website. Error responses can occur for many reasons. For instance, a user might request objects that don’t exist (and receive a 404 Not Found response) or a user you haven’t authorized might attempt to download an object you have secured using CloudFront’s private content feature (and receive a 403 Forbidden response). Previously, CloudFront would respond with a standard HTML page that would be cached for 5 minutes. These two new features provide you with more control over error responses:

  • Custom Error Pages allow you to serve error pages with your own branding and content. For example, you can now help your visitors navigate to other sections of your website when they request an invalid URL, or you can configure a static page to serve as a fallback for failure of an origin webserver.
  • Configurable Cache Duration for Error Responses allows you to specify how long you want each error page to be cached at CloudFront edge locations. Previously, error responses were cached for five minutes. With the introduction of this feature, you can now choose how long you would like to cache error responses and how frequently CloudFront checks with your origin after an error.

Getting started with these features is easy – just visit the CloudFront developer guide to learn more about Custom Error Pages and Configurable Cache Duration for Error Responses. There is no additional fee to use these features – you continue to pay our existing low data transfer and request rates for your use of CloudFront.

You can also learn more about CloudFront by visiting the Amazon CloudFront product page.