Using Amazon S3 remote file storage with E-junkie

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Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a basic file hosting service that's very affordable (and may even be free during your first year, depending on your usage needs) and known to work well with E-junkie's Remotely Hosted Downloads feature (available with subscription plans of $20/mo and up). Amazon has a Getting Started with S3 tutorial here that you may find useful, but here are the basic steps to set up S3 with files that E-junkie can access to deliver securely to your buyers:

1. Sign up for a free Amazon AWS account if you don't have one already;
2. Log into your AWS account management console (then click S3 if you're not already on that panel when you log in);
3. Click Create Bucket (if you haven't already created one previously or wish to use a new one for E-junkie):
   • Bucket Name: some just use their company or domain name here, but you may wish to use something more obscure or even a random string for better security;
   • Region: any of these will work, but we'd recommend US East (Northern Virginia), as our own services operate from that AWS Region;
   • Click Create.
4. Click the name of the bucket you created (you can use the same bucket for all of your E-junkie download files);
5. Click Create Folder;
6. Name the folder something obscure or use a random string;
7. Click the new folder name to open it;
8. Click Upload;
9. Click Add Files and then select your product's download file;
10. Repeat the step above if you have files to upload for multiple products;
11. Click Start Upload;
12. Click on your uploaded file (or just right-click on the file), then click Make Public;
    Note that "Public" does not mean the file is listed or otherwise exposed anywhere for the general public to discover; it just means anyone who already knows the exact URL of the file (namely us, and we do not reveal your file URLs to anybody else) could access it directly without further restrictions (similar to having an unlisted phone number).
13. Click on your uploaded file, then copy the file's Object URL shown there;
14. Paste that link into the Remote Product File URL field in your product's settings (see here for more detailed instructions).

After doing this, we would recommend that you use Send Free Download Link in your E-junkie Seller Admin to send yourself a test link for your product(s), so you can confirm the Remote Product File URL you added is working correctly. Specifying a Remote Product File URL automatically supersedes any uploaded file for the same product, so once you complete the test download successfully, you can use the Replace Product File button in that product's settings to upload a 0kB/tiny replacement file (e.g., a blank .txt file you'd save in Notepad) and reclaim the storage space the old file was using at our end.

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