In this blog, I’ll walk through how I deployed my first website on an EC2 instance using AWS.
We will cover everything from launching an instance to connecting via SSH and hosting a static HTML page using Nginx.
Step 1: Create an AWS EC2 Instance
Go to AWS Console → EC2 Dashboard
Click on Launch Instance
Configuration:
Name: any-name
AMI: Amazon Linux 2023
Instance Type: t2.micro or t3.micro (Free Tier)
Key Pair:
Create a new key pair
Name : my-key-pair
Download .pem file (very important)
Step 2: Configure Security Group
Allow the following:
SSH (Port 22) → Anywhere (0.0.0.0/0)
HTTP (Port 80) → Anywhere (0.0.0.0/0)
Copy the public Ipv4 of your ec2 instance
Step 3: Connect to EC2 via SSH (Windows)
Open Command prompt and run:
ssh -i my-key-pair.pem ec2-user@PUBLIC_IP_OF_EC2
Step 4: Update the Server
sudo yum update -y
Step 5: Install Nginx
sudo dnf install nginx -y
Start and enable Nginx:
sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx
Check status:
sudo systemctl status nginx
Step 6: Access Default Nginx Page
Open browser and go to:
You shoud see:
Step 8: Replace Default HTML Page
Navigate to Nginx folder:
cd /usr/share/nginx/html
Edit file:
sudo nano index.html
Paste:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Hello from EC2 Website</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello from EC2</h1>
<p>This is my first deployed website</p>
</body>
</html>
Save and exit.
Step 9: Restart Nginx
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Step 10: View Your Website
Open:
U will see Your html page
Key Learnings
EC2 is a virtual server in the cloud
SSH allows remote access
Nginx serves web content
File paths matter (/ vs ~)
Security Groups control access
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