Using Amazon S3 Service as a Course Platform

Hi, Ashley. Thanks for the reply.

I have read both of the links you provided, but still have more questions than answers. I have tried renaming story.html to index.html, but that did not work any better. I have a suspicion that the issue is one of permissions, but figuring out which of Amazon's 173 permissions to use is a bit of a challenge for this non-programmer!

You're guess is as good as mine! Perhaps if you reach out in that thread though, some of the others who have already done so will see your plea for help and be able to assist? I know Tom is also traveling doing some community roadshows, but commenting on his blog post may also get his attention. 

Thanks again, Ashley.

Hopefully, an experienced forum member or Tom will see this thread and toss in their tuppence worth! The S3 concept is so exciting... if I can just get this permissions thing down!

I just spent an hour with my computer tech and he found that the story.html file has a command to WriteSwfObject without defining SwfObject in the variables declaration area. (This is all hyper-Greek to me...) Ergo, the story.html file crashes when it tries to run off S3. (It does NOT crash when I run it off my local hard drive; we also copied the published file to my tech's computer via a remote connection and it worked fine on his computer too. Maybe S3 has an issue with Articulate's html file structure?)

Anyway, I sent a note to the tech support team at Articulate with screen shots to show the issue and will see what they recommend. Hopefully, we are an exchange of emails away from getting my courses to run on S3.

Thanks Richard - do you have a case number for the recent interaction with our team? I'd be happy to follow along with that to share any updates here. 

Ashley, the case number is Case #00699842.

Thanks!

Thanks Richard - and I see that you're working with Ryan and sharing some files and information back and forth. I'll keep an eye on it and provide any updates here as well. 

Thanks, Ashley. Hopefully, Ryan will figure it out. There seems to be a compatibility issue between Amazon's HTML translator and Storyline's HTML output scripts.

You're in good hands with Ryan! I shared the info from this thread too so that he's got all information at his disposal. :-) 

Just checking in Richard and it looks like you're still working with Ryan on this and may have narrowed it down to a permissions issue. I'll continue to keep an eye on it!

Hi, Ashley. It looks like Ryan and I got it figured out. What the blog posts Articulate provided did not mention was that, like Google drive, I had to set the folders (buckets) to Public so somebody other than me could view the courses. I did that and have since uploaded 19 courses, with 32 more to go. Works like a charm. Just be sure to make the bucket Public when done with it.

Thanks for checking in about this!

No problem Richard and I'm glad that Ryan was able to assist. 

Richard, thank you for posting this solution. I have been trying to figure this out for two days and have almost reached the end of Google trying to find out why my files won't play! 

I hope this works for my files as well! 

Elizabeth, the best of luck to you!  I hope it works for you like it did for me!

Please let me know how it goes for you!

It worked! Seriously, thank you. 

I can't believe we have to manually make every file public. Does anyone know if there's a setting that will automate this? I am using Cloudberry. 

For anyone else trying to figure this out, this is what I did:

1. Sign up for an Amazon S3 account. You'll have to give a credit card, but it's free for a year.

2. From your Console, click on S3 under storage and content delivery.  

3. Click Create a Bucket. (This is basically your root file.)

4. Give your bucket a name. You can't use underscores and it has to be all lower case. 

5. Choose a region. (Oregon always works when I try it.)

6. You should be now on the All Buckets screen. 

7. Click Properties for your new folder. 

8. Select Permissions > Add more permissions > Everyone 

9. Select List and click Save.

Your 25% of the way there..... You now need a way to get your files in the bucket. If you've ever used an FTP, it's the same thing. 

I downloaded Cloudberry Freeware and like it. If you have a Mac, here's the Mac version.

Here are tutorials on using Cloudberry if you need it. Make sure you add the Amazon S3 keys. 

Once you have Cloudberry or another FTP-type software setup:

10. Drag your published Storyline files to the bucket you just set up. (It should be showing in Cloudberry.)

11. Rename the story.html file to story.index.html 

12. Go back to your browser, all of your files should be in the bucket. 

13. Select all the files in the bucket.

14. Select the Actions button. 

15. Select Make Public. (It will ask you if you're sure.)

16. When it's done, go to the story.index.html file and select the Properties button on the top right of your screen. 

17. Copy the url given here. 

That's it. 

I hope this is helpful, like I said I spent two days figuring this out. The roadblock for me was that you need to make all files public, not just the root file. Thanks to Richard's post I finally came across that solution. 

Here are some other resources I found helpful: 

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/

Streaming video from Amazon S3

Host Presenter Courses

Easy ways to share elearning courses

Security Info

I'm glad to see this thread in the list. I was just getting ready to reopen this topic.

I've noted for some time that HTML5 output, at least on an iPad, isn't very robust. Especially with slower DSL speeds, graphics sometimes don't display in slides, videos sometimes don't work, and there are glitches when audio starts during an animation.

Download speed seems to be an issue. I've been hosting on GoDaddy servers for ten years and have been wrestling with this problem ever since the iPad appeared. 

Do Amazon's high speed S3 servers really help on the user end of things? Does anyone have any experience seeing an improvement after hosting their presentations and stories on S3?

Russ, I have not had any big issues with playback on S3. I normally start my programs with an animated screen of my logo and a short (6-8 sec) sound clip. I noticed that this slide would often start halfway through, so I added a blank (and black) slide before it and set the timeline for 1.5 seconds, and everything works smoothly now.

Hey there, Richard. Yes, I wasn't expecting any problems with S3. Just wondering if people had noticed an improvement after moving to them from somewhere else. 

I used to have some issues like you stated and also tried the blank slides prior to overcome it. I think that was when I was doing most of my work with Presenter. It would preload 3 slides at a time so this would sometimes help with the buffering. I'm not sure that SL works the same way and in HTML5 I get the impression that it doesn't buffer anything, i.e. it seems to stream each slide as it occurs. All in all, I'm very disappointed in HTML5. Wish everyone had just stayed with Flash It works so much better where Articulate is concerned.

These directions are great but.... I feel as though I need to save my Articulate file a certain way.  Any ideas?

Hi!

I've followed these steps exactly.  I have also followed video tutorials on other blogs... I am at a loss.  I can't figure out what I am missing.  Any chance you have an available video or step by step from what to do while you are still in articulate to it published on the web.

Thank you so much for any extra info

Hi, Jo -- Thanks for your question! And as this thread is a bit dated and some of the participants may no longer be subscribed, you are welcome to reach out to individuals directly by way of the "Contact Me' link on their profile page if you would like. :)

Hi,

I'm still using Amazon S3 and it works great. I'm not bothering with Cloudberry though. I just upload directly to the bucket. Also I found a policy you can assign to the bucket so all files are public. 

Here's the policy: 

{
"Version": "2008-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Sid": "Allow Public Access to All Objects",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": {
"AWS": "*"
},
"Action": "s3:GetObject",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::PUT IN THE NAME OF YOUR FILE/*"
}
]
}

I don't save the files in any special way, but they are saved to publish to the web.

This weekend I'll create a video and post it to this thread. 

Jo,

When I first started doing this I got hung up when I forgot to make the files public. 

What happens when you try to view the file? Do you get an error?