Knowledge Panoee Features

Host Your Pano2VR Virtual Tour for Free: A Comprehensive Guide

05/12/2023
Trịnh Tùng Anh
Panoee CEO & co-founder. Virtual Tour enthusiast & 360 panoramic photographers for 10 years.

Pano2VR is a fantastic tool for crafting stunning 360-degree virtual tours. However, sharing your creation with the world can be expensive and tricky. Enter the power of free virtual tour hosting with AWS S3 cloud storage and Panoee S3 hosting service. AWS S3 is your generous cloud storage buddy, offering a free tier for beginners. Panoee S3 hosting service is your virtual tour valet, connecting your AWS S3 bucket to the web and effortlessly serving your virtual tour files. Follow along and let your virtual tours roam free without emptying your wallet!

Step 1: Export the Pano2VR virtual tour

Prior to web hosting, the virtual tour must be exported from Pano2VR, ensuring its readiness for online dissemination.

Host Your Pano2VR Virtual Tour for Free
Export your Pano2Vr virtual tour for Web
Host Your Pano2VR Virtual Tour for Free
The Pano2VR Virtual Tour exported file should be like this

Step 2: Create your AWS Credential

Create your AWS Account

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Click button “Create an AWS Account”
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Follow AWS guide to create new account with your email address.

After signing up, please login AWS console with your account.

Setup AWS S3

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In AWS Console, search for service “S3”
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Click button “Create bucket” to create your very first Bucket – Bucket is the Storage where you create & manage folders. Each folder can be used to host one Virtual Tours.
Create S3 bucket S3 Global create bucket scaled
Following all above steps to create & intial setup your bucket. Please notice that your bucket needs to be set “public” & allow enough permission so we can manage it remotely & viewers can access files in your project to view the Virtual Tours.
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After create new bucket, you will be redirect back to Bucket listing page. Please notice that your bucket should display like above.
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Click the Bucket to go inside, switch to tab “Properties” and click button “Edit” in panel “Static website hosting”. This options allows files in bucket can be served under specific URLs so viewers can view your Virtual Tours via file “index.html”.
Edit static website hosting S3 bucket mypanoeesample S3 Globa
Follow steps above to setup “Static Website Hosting” options.
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After config, you will see above information in panel “Static website Hosting”
mypanoeesample S3 bucket S3 Global scaled
Follow steps to configure Bucket Policy & CORS rule in tab “Permission”. For each section, you need to click button “Edit” to start editing. Please copy below code and paste into corresponding area.
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": "*",
            "Action": [
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:PutObject"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::mypanoeesample/*",
                "arn:aws:s3:::mypanoeesample"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

For bucket policy, please notice that you needs to insert your bucket name in codeblock “Resources”

[
    {
        "AllowedHeaders": [
            "*"
        ],
        "AllowedMethods": [
            "PUT",
            "POST",
            "DELETE",
            "GET"
        ],
        "AllowedOrigins": [
            "*"
        ],
        "ExposeHeaders": [
            "x-amz-server-side-encryption",
            "x-amz-request-id",
            "x-amz-id-2",
            "ETag"
        ],
        "MaxAgeSeconds": 86400
    }
]

Setup AWS IAM

After setup S3 service, you need to setup IAM service to create the Credential.

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In AWS console, search “IAM” and find the service “IAM”
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In IAM dashboard, click area “Users” to go to users management, in which you will create new user.
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Click button “Create user”
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Specify the user name and click button “Next”
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Now you need to setup permission for this user. Please select “Attach policies directly”, then find and check “AmazonS3FullAccess” rule. Finally click button “Next”
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Click to the new user to start creating necessary credential.
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Switch to tab “Security credentials”, then click button “Create access key”
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Please choose the option “Third-party service” – because you will grant the permission for website hosting.panoee.com to use the credential to access & manage your S3 resource.
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Your Credential is finally created. Please store the key pair in safe place.

Step 3: Connect the AWS S3 to the Panoee S3 hosting service

Authenticate with panoee.com

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Go to website https://hosting.panoee.com and click button “Enter S3 Credential Key”
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You will need to be Panoee user in order to use this Hosting service (for free of course). You can login with Google or Facebook to fasten this process.

Enter your AWS Credential

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After authentication, now you can enter your Credential to start using Hosting service. In the mean time, you can test with our demo Credential. Please notice that your Credential is stored in your browser locally and it will never be sent anywhere else.

Step 4: Upload your Pano2VR virtual tour to Panoee S3 hosting service

Host Your Pano2VR Virtual Tour for Free
 Set your project name (folder name), choose the upload method & just drag your folder or .zip file into the uploading area…
Host Your Pano2VR Virtual Tour for Free
Upload the whole folder including all iteams into the uploading area
Host Your Pano2VR Virtual Tour for Free
After uploading succeeds, you can see all files in your folders. Now you can preview the file or image, manage your folders with supporting tools and click button “View Tour 360” to go to your published Pano2VR Virtual Tours.
Host Your Pano2VR Virtual Tour for Free
Now you can see your Pano2VR virtual tours hosted on the AWS S3
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