Tutorial: Sign up for an Amazon Web Services account

table.steps { width: 100% } table.steps td { vertical-align: top; } table.steps td:first-child { width: 30px; } The same Amazon from whom you buy books and many other things per mail also runs Amazon Web Services, which offers allows you to rent various types of computing equipment. For example, you can rent a virtual server (Amazon calls it an "instance"), which you can run your website on.

Before we can do that, however, you need to sign up for an Amazon Web Services account. Even if you already have a regular account for the Amazon website, you still need to sign up for Amazon Web Services; it's a separate account.

Note: Sign up for Amazon Web Services before you need it. They sometimes need 24h or longer to activate new accounts.

Sign up for Amazon Web Services
Here are the steps:

Activate EC2 and S3
EC2 is the Amazon web service that rents out virtual servers to you. You need it to run your site at Amazon.

S3 is the Amazon web service that stores data for you, such as backups. You do not need it, but you might think it's a good idea to store backups of your site in S3 from time to time.