1. Make a directory and create an index.html file

Let’s create a directory called my_website. In it, we’ll create an index.html file that looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <body>
        <h1>Dead simple http-server with node.js!</h1>
    </body>
</html>

2. Start the web server

Open a terminal in the directory that contains index.html, and type this:

npx http-server

You'll see something like this...

Starting up http-server, serving ./
Available on:
  http://127.0.0.1:8081
  http://10.0.1.6:8081

Notes

The port number that gets assigned to the server may differ for you – it depends on what you have running on your workstation
If you don’t have http-server, install it globally with npm install -g http-server

You’ll see your index.html page rendered in the context of a running web server.

To kill the server, just quit the node process by hitting CTRL + C.