Upload index.html to S3

Hub › AWS › Beginner › Upload index.html to S3

Goal

After this page your index.html will exist as an object in your bucket and aws s3 ls s3://$BUCKET will list it.

Prerequisites

• index.html on disk
• Bucket created and $BUCKET exported

Upload

From the directory holding index.html:

aws s3 cp index.html s3://$BUCKET/index.html \
  --content-type text/html

The --content-type text/html flag tells S3 to label the object as HTML. Without it, browsers may download the file instead of rendering it.

Expected output:

upload: ./index.html to s3://aarav-beginner-site-2026/index.html

Verify the object exists

aws s3 ls s3://$BUCKET/

Output:

2026-06-15 14:45:02        220 index.html

The columns are date, time, byte size, and key. A non-zero size means S3 received the bytes.

Why we can't browse it yet

At this point the file is uploaded but not readable by anyone except you. S3 buckets are private by default — every object inherits "block all public access". If you try the S3 object URL right now, you'll get an AccessDenied XML response.

The next page flips the bucket's settings so anonymous GETs work.

Next → Make the bucket publicly readable