14. Amazon S3: Buckets, Objects, Policies and Presigned URLs
14.4 Hosting a Static Website on S3
HTML, CSS, JS aani images astil (server-side code nahi) tar S3 varun website chalavta yete – server nahi, patching nahi. Ha ekach bucket asa aahe jithe aapan jaanun-bujun public read deto.
BUCKET=ravindra-static-site-nashik
aws s3 mb s3://$BUCKET --region ap-south-1
aws s3 sync ./site s3://$BUCKET/ # index.html, error.html, css/, img/
aws s3 website s3://$BUCKET/ --index-document index.html --error-document error.html
# allow public policies on THIS bucket only (console: Permissions → Block public access → Edit)
aws s3api put-public-access-block --bucket $BUCKET \
--public-access-block-configuration BlockPublicAcls=true,IgnorePublicAcls=true,BlockPublicPolicy=false,RestrictPublicBuckets=false
Public read policy – only GetObject, never ListBucket or PutObject:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [{
"Sid": "PublicReadWebsite",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": "*",
"Action": "s3:GetObject",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::ravindra-static-site-nashik/*"
}]
}
The website endpoint looks like http://ravindra-static-site-nashik.s3-website.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com. Note: the S3 website endpoint is HTTP only. For HTTPS and your own domain, put CloudFront in front of the bucket (with Origin Access Control, so the bucket itself can stay private) and point www.yourdomain.com to CloudFront with a CNAME.
| Option | HTTPS | Bucket public? | Use for |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 website endpoint | No | Yes (read only) | Quick demos, learning |
| CloudFront + OAC | Yes, custom domain | No – only CloudFront can read | Real production static sites |
| Nginx on EC2 (Part 3) | Yes with Certbot | Not applicable | When you also need server-side code |
Ravindra Bagale's Tip
Website bucket madhe students chukun .env, backup.zip, .git folder pan sync kartat – aani te public hotat! aws s3 sync ./site s3://bucket/ --exclude ".git/*" --exclude "*.env" --exclude "*.zip" asa exclude vapra. Upload nantar aws s3 ls --recursive ne ekda nakki bagha kay public zala aahe.
Lab
Host a two-page static site (index.html, about.html, error.html) on S3. Open the website endpoint, open a wrong URL to see error.html, then try aws s3 ls s3://<bucket> without credentials (--no-sign-request) and confirm listing is refused while pages still load.