Guides

How to Host a Static Website on Amazon S3 (Step by Step)

By Ravindra Bagale, AWS & DevOps trainer · LinkedIn · Published: 29 September 2026 · Last updated: 30 September 2026

To host a static website on Amazon S3, create a bucket, upload index.html (and error.html), turn on Static website hosting in the bucket's Properties, turn off Block Public Access for that bucket only, and add a bucket policy that allows s3:GetObject for everyone. The site is then live at the bucket website endpoint, for example http://BUCKET.s3-website.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com. The S3 website endpoint is HTTP only; for HTTPS and a custom domain, put CloudFront in front.

BUCKET=tujanena-shayari-site-2026            # globally unique, lowercase
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
aws s3api put-public-access-block --bucket $BUCKET --public-access-block-configuration \
  BlockPublicAcls=true,IgnorePublicAcls=true,BlockPublicPolicy=false,RestrictPublicBuckets=false
aws s3api put-bucket-policy --bucket $BUCKET --policy file://policy.json   # public read, Step 5
# open http://tujanena-shayari-site-2026.s3-website.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com

What do I need before hosting a site on S3?

• An AWS account and an IAM user (not root) — see How to Create an IAM User with MFA.
• A static site: HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images. S3 cannot run PHP, WordPress or a database; for that use EC2 (Host a Static Website on EC2 with Nginx is the server version of this guide).
• An index.html, and ideally an error.html for wrong links.

How does an S3 website answer a browser?

How do I host a static website on Amazon S3?

Step 1 — Prepare the files

For practice, make a tiny two-page site on your laptop:

mkdir site && cd site
cat > index.html <<'HTML'
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="mr"><head><meta charset="utf-8"><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Shayari</title></head>
<body style="font-family:sans-serif;text-align:center;padding-top:60px">
  <h1>आजची शायरी</h1><p>Hosted on Amazon S3 – no server!</p>
</body></html>
HTML
echo '<h1>404 – page not found</h1><a href="/">Home</a>' > error.html
cd ..

Keep <meta charset="utf-8"> in every page so Marathi and Hindi text shows correctly.

Step 2 — Create the bucket

S3 → Create bucket → General purpose → a bucket name such as tujanena-shayari-site-2026. Bucket names are global across all AWS accounts, lowercase, 3–63 characters, no spaces or underscores. Choose your region (for example Asia Pacific (Mumbai) ap-south-1). Keep Object Ownership: ACLs disabled.

Step 3 — Allow public policies for this bucket only

In Block Public Access settings for this bucket, untick Block all public access and tick the acknowledgement. Then Create bucket. If the bucket already exists: Permissions → Block public access (bucket settings) → Edit.

Leave the account-level Block Public Access and all your other buckets untouched.

Step 4 — Upload the files

Open the bucket → Upload → Add files (index.html, error.html) and Add folder (css/, img/ if you have them) → Upload. index.html must sit at the root of the bucket, not inside a site/ folder.

Step 5 — Add the public read bucket policy

Permissions → Bucket policy → Edit, paste this (change the bucket name) and Save changes:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [{
    "Sid": "PublicReadWebsite",
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Principal": "*",
    "Action": "s3:GetObject",
    "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::tujanena-shayari-site-2026/*"
  }]
}

Only s3:GetObject — never s3:ListBucket or s3:PutObject for "Principal": "*". The /* at the end of Resource means "every object in the bucket".

Step 6 — Turn on static website hosting

Properties → scroll to Static website hosting → Edit → Enable → Host a static website → Index document index.html, Error document error.html → Save changes. The same section now shows the Bucket website endpoint:

http://tujanena-shayari-site-2026.s3-website.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com

Open it on your phone — your site is live, with no server to patch. 🎉 Try a wrong path such as /abc to see error.html.

Step 7 — Update the site later

aws s3 sync ./site s3://tujanena-shayari-site-2026/ --delete --exclude ".git/*"

--delete removes files from the bucket that you deleted locally. Browsers may cache old files for a short time; refresh with Ctrl+F5.

Step 8 — HTTPS and your own domain (next step)

For a real site, create a CloudFront distribution with the bucket as origin and Origin Access Control (OAC), so only CloudFront can read the bucket and Block Public Access can stay on. Add a free certificate from AWS Certificate Manager (in us-east-1 for CloudFront) and point www.yourdomain.com to CloudFront with a CNAME record.

How do I fix common S3 website errors?

Ghabru naka 😅 — these are the usual ones: