How I Used AWS CloudFront to Make My Site 2x Faster Globally

There was a time when I thought a fast server meant a fast site.

But I was wrong.

No matter how optimized my code was, users from Europe or Asia were seeing slow load times.

Meanwhile, everything loaded fine for me—because my server was in the same country.

So I started digging.

That’s when I found the real bottleneck: distance.

The solution?

AWS CloudFront.

It didn’t just improve my load times—it cut them in half for users worldwide.

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Here’s exactly how I did it.

Step 1: Understanding the Problem

My site was hosted on an EC2 instance in Virginia (us-east-1).

Great performance in the US.

Terrible everywhere else.

When a visitor in Germany loaded my homepage, the request had to travel across the ocean.

It wasn’t the server—it was the trip.

Even with gzip, cache control, and image optimization, I was still losing 2–4 seconds on initial page load.

Not ideal if you care about bounce rate.

Step 2: What Is CloudFront?

CloudFront is AWS’s Content Delivery Network (CDN).

It distributes your static (and even dynamic) content across 300+ edge locations around the world.

When a user visits your site, CloudFront serves content from the nearest edge server, not your origin server.

That means fewer miles traveled, faster response times.

It also caches content intelligently, reducing backend load.

Perfect for image-heavy websites, SPAs, or any site that serves repeat traffic.

Step 3: Preparing My Content for CloudFront

Before using CloudFront, I made sure my site had:

• Static assets stored on S3 (images, CSS, JS)
• HTML files deployed via S3 (my site was static, but this works with EC2 or other backends too)
• Correct Content-Type headers on files (important for caching)
• Proper Cache-Control metadata set on S3 objects (so CloudFront knows what to cache and for how long)

Without these, CloudFront would still work—but not well.

Bad headers = no cache = no performance win.

Step 4: Creating a CloudFront Distribution

Here’s exactly how I set it up:

1. Opened AWS Console > CloudFront
2. Clicked “Create Distribution”
3. Under Origin Domain, I selected my S3 bucket (the one hosting my site)
4. Left Origin Path empty (since I wanted to serve the whole bucket)
5. Set Viewer Protocol Policy to “Redirect HTTP to HTTPS”
6. Under Default Cache Behavior, I enabled:
   • Caching based on headers: None (to improve cache hits)
   • Compress objects automatically: Yes
7. For Price Class, I chose “Use all edge locations” for maximum global reach

Lastly, I created the distribution.

It took about 15 minutes to deploy.

Step 5: Connecting My Domain

CloudFront gives you a default domain like d1234.cloudfront.net.

Not great for production.

To use my custom domain (www.mysite.com):

1. I went to Route 53 (or your DNS provider)
2. Created a CNAME record pointing www.mysite.com to my CloudFront domain
3. In CloudFront, under Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs), I added www.mysite.com
4. Set up an SSL certificate in ACM (Amazon Certificate Manager) for my domain
5. Linked it in the CloudFront distribution

After that, my domain worked through CloudFront—securely, globally, and fast.

Step 6: Measuring the Results

I didn’t just want to “feel” the difference.

I wanted proof.

So I ran tests using:

• Google PageSpeed Insights
• WebPageTest.org (with servers in Asia and Europe)
• Lighthouse in Chrome DevTools

Before CloudFront (Germany test server):

• Time to First Byte (TTFB): ~900ms
• Full load: ~3.5 seconds

After CloudFront:

• TTFB: ~200ms
• Full load: ~1.6 seconds

That’s more than 2x faster.

And in some regions, it was even faster than that.

Step 7: Fine-Tuning the Cache Behavior

After a week, I noticed some files weren’t updating as expected.

Turns out I had set a long cache duration on JavaScript files.

To fix this, I:

1. Updated S3 object metadata to use Cache-Control: max-age=3600, must-revalidate
2. In CloudFront, created cache behaviors to set different rules for:
   • /index.html → short cache (1 minute)
   • /static/* → long cache (1 month)
3. Enabled Invalidations when I pushed updates (can be done via CLI too)

This gave me the best of both worlds:

Fast caching + flexibility to update content when needed.

What You Should Know Before Using CloudFront

Here are a few simple lessons I learned:

• Use S3 + CloudFront if you’re serving a static site. It’s cheap and reliable.
• Always configure headers. Without correct Content-Type and Cache-Control, performance gains drop.
• CloudFront logs are a goldmine. Use them to see where your traffic comes from and what’s being cached.
• Invalidate carefully. CloudFront invalidation is powerful, but avoid frequent full-path invalidations—they cost money and time.
• Price class matters. If your traffic is mostly in one region, use a regional edge setting to reduce costs.

Final Thoughts

You don’t need a complex backend to go global.

You don’t need 10 engineers or a $10K/month CDN.

What you need is a clear understanding of where your performance is breaking—and a simple tool to fix it.

For me, that was AWS CloudFront.

It let me serve my site faster, everywhere, without changing a single line of code.

The results were real.

The difference was visible.

And the setup? Just a few clicks.

If you’re running a public-facing site and haven’t used CloudFront yet, you’re leaving speed on the table.

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