A hands-on course by Cloud Launchpad

AWS Platform Engineering, hands-on

Build a real AWS platform from the ground up. Start with a simple static site, put it in S3, describe it as Terraform, serve it privately through CloudFront, then ship it with a GitHub Actions pipeline.

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  • 13 modules
  • 48 lessons
  • Free on the AWS free tier
  • No sign-up, no backend

Before we start

Why AWS for a static website?

A plain static site, exactly what the 0-fresh-start branch contains, can be hosted for free in about a minute on GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify or Vercel. Look at the address bar: this course website is itself hosted on Cloudflare Pages. That isn't an accident. It's the point.

We could host the application the same way. But then we'd miss the chance to learn cloud infrastructure, IAM, CDNs, TLS certificates, Infrastructure as Code and a real CI/CD pipeline, which is what this course actually exists to teach. A static site is simply the cheapest, safest place to learn them: low stakes, fast feedback, and an architecture small enough to hold in your head all at once.

What you'll build

A private origin, delivered globally, deployed automatically

By the end of Module 6 this exists in your own AWS account. By the end of Module 9, a git push is the only step required to update it.

VisitorBrowser HTTPS
TLS · ACM
Amazon CloudFrontGlobal edge network cache · compress · security headers
SigV4 · OAC
Amazon S3Private bucket block public access: on
Direct requests to the bucket return 403. Built in Module 6, verified in Module 9.

Course pathway

Thirteen modules, one continuous build

Each module leaves the project in a working state and hands you something concrete for the next one. Nothing stays theoretical for long: every concept is followed by something you actually do.

Every module

Jump to any module

Progress is tracked per module, entirely in your browser.

Technologies

What this course actually uses

  • Amazon S3
  • CloudFront
  • IAM
  • ACM
  • Route 53
  • Terraform
  • GitHub
  • GitHub Actions

Prerequisites

  • Comfortable in a terminal (you don't need to know AWS or Terraform yet)
  • Git installed, and a GitHub account
  • An AWS account (the free tier covers this entire course)
  • Python 3, for the simplest possible local web server

You'll be able to

  • Explain why a private origin behind a CDN beats a public bucket
  • Write and reason about real Terraform, not pseudo-code
  • Build a GitHub Actions pipeline authenticated with OIDC, not stored keys
  • Diagnose drift, rollback a bad deploy, and tear a platform down safely

Start with the application, finish with the platform

Clone the project, start on 0-fresh-start, and build it in four stages. Every stage has a start branch and a finished end branch, with a Git history you can read commit by commit.

Start course Starting branch Finished build