Redirects can account for a significant share of direct traffic so taking a few minutes to optimize them is worthwhile.

Using Cloudfront & S3 for redirects will improve responsiveness, reduce server load and improve management (since they are managed via aws-cli or the console).

Let's say you have a typical .htaccess redirect like this.

RewriteEngine On
### re-direct to www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Or worse, it could look like this in your index.php

$protocol = (@$_SERVER["HTTPS"] == "on") ? "https://" : "http://";

if (substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], 0, 4) !== 'www.') {
    header('Location: '.$protocol.'www.'.$_SERVER …