Devlin Peck
Do you have an awesome Articulate Storyline course that you'd like to share with the world, but you don't have a place to host it?
In this tutorial, I'll show you how to upload your Storyline output to Amazon S3 and share it with a direct link.
This is an easy way to share your Storyline work with clients, employers, and peers, and it's completely free!
IMPORTANT NOTE: This article is slightly outdated. To see the current best approach, follow along with this YouTube video that I created.
Alternatively, if you're using WordPress and would prefer a fast, paid solution, then you should check out the plugin at elearningfreak.com (affiliate link).
Let's get started.
First thing's first, you're going to need an Amazon Web Services account to use with Amazon S3. Head over to the S3 website and choose the "Create an AWS Account" option from the top toolbar.
Enter your email address, create a password, and select an AWS account name, then select the "Continue" button.
Now you can select your account type and enter your personal information (including your billing information) to continue the account creation process. Just follow the prompts and choose the "Free" plan, as this includes 5 GB of storage at no cost.
Once you've created your account, it's time to create the "Bucket" where all of your Storyline projects will go.
To do this, you first need to sign in to your new account as a root user on the Amazon S3 home page.
If you got logged out, then select the "Get started with Amazon S3" button to log in.
Once you're signed in, select the orange "Create bucket" button.
On the "Create bucket" screen, you need to do the following:
Voila! The bucket has been created and your Amazon S3 account is ready to host some content.
From the "Buckets" page, select the bucket that you just created.
If you haven't already published your Storyline course as an HTML web project, then open up your project in Storyline. Go to the "Home" tab, click on "Publish." Choose the "Web" tab, select where you'd like your output to publish to, then press "Publish" again.
Find the published HTML5 output folder in your file explorer, then drag and drop it into the designated area on the Amazon S3 webpage.
After dropping the folder on the Amazon S3 window, scroll down and select the "Additional upload options" text.
Next, scroll down until you see the "Access control list (ACL)".
Turn on "Read" permissions for "Everyone (public access)" by selecting the checkboxes for both Objects and Object ACL.
Now select the checkbox next to "I understand the effects of these changes on the specific objects."
At this point you can scroll to the bottom of the page and select the orange "Upload" button.
Once you see the green "Upload succeeded" banner at the top of the screen, you can select the "Exit" button in the top right.
All that's left to do is grab the link that you can share with others. Select the Storyline course folder that you just uploaded so that we can view its contents.
Select the "story_html5.html" file. If you don't see that file, then select the "story.html" file. (Later versions of Storyline do not have the "story_html5.html" file.)
Now you'll see the public-facing URL for your Storyline project under "Object URL."
You did it! Copy the URL and share it with whomever you'd like or post it on your website.
Amazon S3 is a great way to host Storyline projects when you don't have access to your own hosting server. The process outlined in this tutorial is the quickest way to get up and running, but you could also use an FTP client (such as MSP360 Explorer) to have more precise control over your desktop-to-bucket transfers.
If you have any questions or would like to join a great community of instructional designers and eLearning developers, then you should join the ID community.
