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How to Connect Your S3 Server

Cloudflare R2

Amazon S3

Fileflare allows you to attach your own Amazon S3 server. Doing this allows you to have full control over your storage and bandwidth settings. This means that you will be in control of the pricing for those settings too, while our app is simply the control tool between your store and your server.

If you’re selling large digital files on Shopify, then this is one of the best routes to take.

These are advanced settings. Please only change these if you are familiar with AWS and S3.

Which plan do I need for this feature?

You will need the Growth plan or above. Already installed Fileflare? Upgrade here.

Connecting your own S3 means that you control the storage and bandwidth costs via your Amazon account.

How to do it

Step 1 – Go to the ‘Settings’ page

Once you are on the ‘Settings’ page, click on the button ‘Configure custom S3‘.

configure custom s3

About the settings

Rename my files to keep their name unique?

This will rename files that are uploaded with the same name as other files in your S3, so they don’t overwrite the files.

The names will be renamed with a completely different names of random characters using UUID4. This is a time-based encoding.

Delete files in S3 when removed from the App?

Enabling this setting will delete the files from your S3 if you delete the files inside the app. If you leave it disabled, then deleting the files in our app will not do anything to your S3 files.

Step 2 – Create a bucket

Go to AWS and create your bucket. Enter a bucket name and a region.

create a bucket aws

Step 3 – Configure bucket, copy & paste CORS

If you are using AWS, go to the Permissions tab > scroll down to CORS and click ‘Edit‘.

Copy the CORS config text from the Fileflare S3 page in the app, and paste it into your S3 settings.

cors

Paste the CORS config in the box below, then press ‘Save changes’:

image

Step 4 – Set up API access to the bucket & assign permissions

Add a user to generate your API keys.

add user

Assign the user permissions to manage the S3 bucket.

assign permissions

There have been reports that AWS has changed the way permissions are assigned to a user, which could be more complicated.

Step 5 – Copy & paste the API keys into the app

You will be given API keys:

copy api

Copy and paste the Key and the Secret from AWS to the Fileflare app.

  1. The ‘Access key ID‘ goes into ‘Access Key
  2. The ‘Secret access key‘ goes into ‘Secret Key‘.
key

Step 6 – Copy & paste the bucket details

Find the bucket name and region in the URL (underlined in red below) then copy them into the app.

copy region

Paste them as instructed. Numbers are located in the image above:

  1. The bucket name (1) goes into ‘Bucket
  2. The region (2) goes into ‘Region

Then press ‘Save’.

Step 7 – Test uploading

You should test uploading an asset by going to the ‘Assets’ page and then clicking ‘Upload new asset’.

If everything uploads without any warning or issues, then you have been successful. If you get any errors, please check over the steps again to make sure you have done everything correctly.

Ensure the file has been uploaded by checking in your S3 bucket.

FAQ

What happens if I disconnect the S3 from the app?

If you disconnect the S3, the files will still appear in the app. To completely remove the files from the app, you will need to highlight them all from the Assets page and remove them.

Please check if you had enabled the option “Delete files in S3 when removed from the App?” when you originally connected it because the app may delete all of your files from the S3 if you have this enabled.

Can I change the S3?

Yes, all you need to do is disconnect the old one and then reconnect the new S3. All of your files from the old S3 will still remain in the account.

If you want to remove the old files, you need to go to the “Assets” page, select them all and click remove. You can do this after you have connected the new S3. Just make sure that you will be able to distinguish which file is on the right S3. It would be easy to tell if you checked the “Created” date on the “Assets” page. This will filter the list to show the newest or oldest first.