Is it possible to secure my website using an SSL certificate from AWS Certificate Manager if my website is not hosted on AWS?

Hello,

When you say "Is it possible to secure my website using an SSL certificate from AWS Certificate Manager if my website is not hosted on AWS?", I think there is some confusion here. I read through your question and the steps you are following, and I think what you mean to say is that your DNS is not managed on AWS, but your website is. To be more clear, it sounds like your DNS is managed by the registrar you purchased your domain from, but your website files are actually hosted on the EC2 instance, that is running a web server, correct? If so, it sounds like you are on the right path. Let's go through the steps and verify everything is set up correctly:

Step 1: SSL Certificate: It seems you have successfully requested and verified a public SSL certificate through AWS ACM, which is great. Ensure that the certificate covers the correct domain name(s), including any subdomains if necessary.

Step 2: EC2 Instance: You mentioned that you have created an EC2 instance and added its public IP as an A record in your DNS settings. This setup is generally correct.

Step 3 & 4: Target Group and Load Balancer: Creating a target group and registering your EC2 instance with it is the right step. Similarly, setting up an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to forward HTTPS traffic to the target group and redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS is also correct. Ensure that:

• Your ALB is correctly configured to listen on both HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443).
• The HTTP to HTTPS redirection rules are correctly set up in the ALB settings.

Step 5: Attaching the ACM Certificate: Attaching the ACM certificate to the HTTPS listener on your ALB is a crucial step. Double-check to ensure it is correctly associated.

Step 6: DNS Configuration: Adding the ALB DNS name as a CNAME record in your DNS settings is also correct. Here, you need to make sure that:

• The CNAME record correctly points to the ALB DNS name (it should not be an A record pointing to the ALB IP, as ALB IPs can change).
• Your www subdomain (if you use one) is correctly set up.
• After updating the DNS records, it might take some time for the DNS changes to propagate globally due to DNS caching. This can take up to 48 hours, but generally much faster.

Step 7: Security Group: Ensure your security group allows HTTP and HTTPS traffic, which seems to be correctly configured from your description.

Additional Checks:

• Browser Cache: Sometimes, browser caches can cause issues. Try accessing the website in incognito mode or clear your browser’s cache and try again.
• DNS Propagation: As mentioned earlier, DNS changes can take some time to propagate globally. You might check the DNS propagation using tools like DNS Checker.
• Other DNS Records: Make sure you don't also have an A record pointing to your old web server address in conflict with the CNAME for the ALB. Remove any legacy records.
• SSL Configuration: You might review the SSL configuration on your server to ensure it’s correctly set up to handle HTTPS requests.
• Website Configuration: Ensure your website server (like Apache, Nginx, etc.) is correctly configured to serve content over HTTPS.
• SSL Test: You might use SSL test tools like SSL Labs SSL Test to identify any issues with your SSL setup.

If you’ve checked all the above and still encountering issues, please provide us more details on the issues you’re seeing, so that it's easier to pinpoint the problem.

I hope this helps!