Portfolio Project | Static Content/Website with AWS S3 and CloudFront (VIDEO)

hello avatars, short and sweet little portfolio project today that I implemented for a local small restaurant that wanted to make their menus available via QR code. This portfolio project falls entirely in the free tier, but make sure you delete any resources after (as always), and have billing alarms set up in case you forget.

Note: Trying out the video medium for this SubStack post. If it does well there could be more in the future.

Creating projects like this in scenarios is important because it shows you can connect the business needs to the technology and show cost reductions, time savings, etc. These are the kinds of things people are looking for. Additionally, talking about some of the design decisions and the consequential tradeoffs conveys you are able to critically think. This kind of fakes experience for you resume and gives you something to talk about in interviews. Reminder: if you need help on you resume two of my favorite cartoons have great articles on that:

Misc2: Refining Your Resume

How to Reverse Engineer the Perfect Product Resume

Would highly recommend giving those two cartoons a subscribe.

Now, lets take a look at this consult

Outline

Problem: Currently restaurant is spending x dollars on paper menus with added overhead for production. How can the restaurant use technology to reduce paper usage?

KPI: Restaurant wants to reduce paper menu usage by x% after 1 quarter

Solution: Upload menu to S3, deliver via CloudFront, create QR codes to lead to the menu.

Solution Cost: My fees + <$100/m. This place is smaller so I find it unlikely there is enough traffic to drive a price above $100. This is always tough to estimate but use AWS Pricing Calculator and make your best guess.

As-Is Costs: This would be how much money and time the place is currently spending with production and overhead. For this case we can show time savings and money savings.

Comparing the As-Is costs and the Solution costs is where you provide value.

Implementation

Real simple one today, but something that has immediate value add for restaurants in reducing paper and overhead.

Note: You would have to expand the project if the company has multiple menus for different services (lunch, dinner, etc)

Turbo Note: Blocking public access and creating an origin access identity we can restrict access so that only requests coming from CloudFront can access the S3 Bucket containing the menus (objects in S3).

Turbo Note: Can redirect HTTP to HTTPS for security bonus points.

Turbo Note: I opted to only select edge locations in North America and Europe as this restaurant is local, and there is not much value to reducing latency for global customers, as there are not any. This will also save some infinitesimal amount of money.

END

-Celt