Hosting a Static Website on Amazon S3

You can host a static website on Amazon S3. On a static website, individual webpages include static content. They might also contain client-side scripts. By contrast, a dynamic website relies on server-side processing, including server-side scripts such as PHP, JSP, or ASP.NET. Amazon S3 does not support server-side scripting. AWS also has resources for hosting dynamic websites. To learn more about website hosting on AWS, see Web Hosting.

Topics

• Website Endpoints
• Configuring a Bucket for Website Hosting
• Example Walkthroughs - Hosting Websites on Amazon S3

To host a static website, you configure an Amazon S3 bucket for website hosting and then upload your website content to the bucket. For more information, see Configuring a Bucket for Website Hosting. This bucket must have public read access. It is intentional that everyone in the world will have read access to this bucket. To learn how to configure public read access for your bucket, see Permissions Required for Website Access. The website is then available at the AWS Region-specific website endpoint of the bucket.

Depending on your Region, Amazon S3 website endpoints follow one of these two formats:

http://bucket-name.s3-website.Region.amazonaws.com

http://bucket-name.s3-website-Region.amazonaws.com

For a complete list of Amazon S3 website endpoints, see Amazon S3 Website Endpoints.

This URL will return the default index document that you configured for the website.

Example Requesting an Object at the Root Level
To request a specific object that is stored at the root level in the bucket, use the following URL structure:

http://bucket-name.s3-website.Region.amazonaws.com/object-name

For example, this URL requests the photo.jpg object that is stored at the root level in the bucket:

http://example-bucket.s3-website.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/photo.jpg

Example Requesting an Object in a Prefix
To request an object that is stored in a folder in your bucket, use this URL structure:

http://bucket-name.s3-website.Region.amazonaws.com/folder-name/object-name

This URL requests the docs/doc1.html object in your bucket.

http://example-bucket.s3-website.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/docs/doc1.html

Using Your Own Domain Instead of accessing the website by using an Amazon S3 website endpoint, you can use your own domain, such as example.com, to serve your content. Amazon S3, along with Amazon Route 53, supports hosting a website at the root domain. For example, if you have the root domain example.com and you host your website on Amazon S3, your website visitors can access the site from their browser by typing either http://www.example.com or http://example.com. For an example walkthrough, see Example: Setting Up a Static Website Using a Custom Domain.

Note
The Amazon S3 website endpoints do not support HTTPS. For information about using HTTPS with an Amazon S3 bucket, see the following:
How do I use CloudFront to serve HTTPS requests for my Amazon S3 bucket? Requiring HTTPS for Communication Between CloudFront and Your Amazon S3 Origin