Trouble Deploying React Portfolio on AWS S3 + CloudFront — Getting “Access Denied” Error

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Description

Hey everyone, I’m an aspiring AWS Solutions Architect currently working towards the SAA-C03 certification. I learn best through hands-on projects, so I’ve been actively building and deploying small applications to get practical exposure. Recently, I created a React portfolio website to showcase my resume and tried deploying it using AWS services like S3, CloudFront, and IAM. I set up the S3 bucket for static website hosting, ensured public access settings were correctly configured, added the appropriate bucket policy and CORS configuration, and even set up a CI/CD pipeline via GitHub Actions. The pipeline installs dependencies, builds the app, and pushes the contents to the S3 bucket. However, when I try to access the website through the CloudFront URL, I get an “Access Denied” error. I’ve double-checked the bucket permissions, the CloudFront distribution settings, and ensured that the origin is pointed to the correct S3 bucket. A few extra details: •I haven’t used AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) yet — I’m just trying to get things working without HTTPS for now. •The error is shown in XML format (typical S3/CloudFront access denied response). I’m stuck and not sure what I’m missing. Could it be an OAI/OAC config issue or something to do with how CloudFront accesses the S3 bucket? Would appreciate any insights or guidance. Thanks in advance

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