When publishing Website or Player releases, the MediaStorm Platform generates a collection of static files and uploads them to a third-party service provider, configured by the user, for hosting. (Currently we support Netlify and Amazon Web Services.) This approach presents several advantages:
- Control: Published projects are served from infrastructure under the end user’s control.
- Reliability: Once published, projects are hosted entirely independent of the MediaStorm Platform backend service. In the rare event of a service disruption or other downtime affecting the Platform, existing published work is not impacted.
- Performance: Static websites are inherently performant. Additionally, the hosting services we support offer global content delivery networks that further optimize performance by serving assets from geographically diverse edge locations.
- Cost: MediaStorm does not manage or markup your hosting costs. You will be billed directly by your hosting service provider and will only pay for what you actually use.
Publishing With Netlify
Netlify is an all-in-one platform for deploying and hosting websites. Netlify includes a high-performance content delivery network and convenient features such as free, automatic HTTPS support for all sites. The Platform’s integration with Netlify requires minimal setup, and we recommend this publishing option to most users.
Learn how to connect with Netlify »
Publishing With Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services is a comprehensive cloud computing platform offering dozens of individual services designed to meet the needs of organizations of any size. The Platform can publish releases to the AWS S3 cloud storage service, which can be configured to act as a hosting environment for public web content.
Publishing Platform content with AWS is functionally similar to publishing with Netlify, but our AWS integration requires some additional configuration steps during the setup process. Due to the way AWS services are billed, the precise costs are difficult to estimate in advance, and can vary somewhat from month to month along with your traffic levels. With both of these considerations in mind, we recommend this publishing option to Platform users who already utilize AWS for other aspects of their organization’s technology infrastructure or are otherwise familiar with AWS, with appropriate policies and resources in place for its management and monitoring.
The Platform’s integration with S3 can be configured by organization admin users through a simple interface. One or more S3 buckets can be added in the Platform’s Settings area and subsequently will be available as destination options when creating and publishing releases. In broad terms, the process for configuring S3 integration is as follows:
- Using the AWS Management Console or API, create an S3 bucket for use with the MediaStorm Platform. We recommend creating a dedicated bucket exclusively for this use.
- Optionally, configure CloudFront to serve content from the S3 bucket. This allows for serving content from a custom domain, in addition to the performance benefits provided by a CDN.
- Create an AWS identity for use with the MediaStorm Platform. We recommend creating a dedicated identity for this purpose, and assigning it only the permissions strictly required to manage content in the appropriate S3 bucket.
- In the MediaStorm Platform Settings area, configure the S3 integration by entering bucket details and access credentials.
For detailed documentation on this process, outlining step-by-step setup instructions and optimal configuration parameters for the relevant AWS services, please refer to these additional pages:
Once your AWS environment is configured according to the above guidelines, you are ready to set up the Platform integration.
Learn how to connect with AWS »
Password Protection
In some circumstances, you may wish to restrict access to a published release with a password. For example, this could be useful if you wish to share a project with other users (who do not have direct access to the MediaStorm Platform) for review in advance of a public launch.
This feature is not directly supported by the MediaStorm Platform, but can be configured with your hosting provider, whether you choose to publish to Netlify or Amazon Web Services.
Netlify includes a password protection feature with paid plans. It is simple to set up via their control panel, following the process detailed here.
With AWS, password protection is not provided as a turnkey feature, but can be configured using custom functions via Lambda@Edge. This article outlines an example of such a configuration.
Bulk Publishing
For information on how to publish releases in bulk, click here.