How To Set Up IAM User For Amazon S3 Bucket

To offload your WordPress media and serve them from an Amazon S3 bucket, you have to create an IAM user on your AWS account.

If you already have an IAM User account that you want to use, you can move forward to this documentation to connect your Amazon S3 bucket for offloading media files.

Follow these steps to create an IAM user on your AWS account.

 Login To AWS Console  #

If you already have an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, you can Sign-in here.

To create an AWS account, sign up here.

We recommend that you create a new IAM user to use the Amazon S3 Bucket.

 Create an IAM User  #

 Step 1 – Add User:     #

After logging into the console, go to the IAM users page here and click on Add User.

A new page named Set User Details will appear.

Enter the name of the new user on the User name field.

This User name is case-sensitive and has to be unique within your AWS account.

You can use a combination of up to 64 characters as a name. You can use:

• Letters;
• Digits;
• Characters: comma (,), period (.), at-sign (@), plus (+), equal (=), and hyphen (-).

On Select AWS access type section, click on the checkbox of Programmatic access.

You can also allow this user to AWS Management Console Access. 

For the AWS Management Console, this user needs a password.

You can set an Autogenerated Password or type a Custom Password.

If you click on the checkbox on Require Password Reset, the user needs to reset the password on the first login.

Now click on the Next: Permissions button.

 Step 2- Set permission:   #

Now, you’ll go to the Set permissions page of the process of creating an IAM user.

If you want to allow this user to manage buckets and objects in the S3 service, you have to grant some specific permissions.

Click on the “Attach existing policies directly” button.

In the Filter Policies box, enter S3.

Now some results will appear for your filter input.

Click on the checkbox for the “AmazonS3FullAccess” policy.

Now, click on the Next: Tags button.

The Tags page is optional. You can add up to 50 Tags with Key and Value.  

Now, click on the Next: Review button at the bottom of this page.

 Step 3- Review:  #

Now, the Review page will appear.

Check the User Details and Permissions Summary sections if all the information you’ve provided is correct.

If they’re correct, click on the Create User button.

 Step 4 – Save your credentials:  #

This time a user creation confirmation message will appear on your screen with the user information.

Two important information will be shown on this screen:

• Access Key ID.
• Secret Access Key.

The new user can use these to sign-in to the account and manage buckets.

**You should save these pieces of information as a CSV file and copy them somewhere safe, as Amazon will never show them again.

If you lose your credentials, you can always create new credentials and disable the old ones.

For security reasons, Amazon never allows you to retrieve your passwords and secret access keys.