An “index.html not found” result means the deployment cannot find a homepage where it expects one. It is usually an archive-layout problem, not a hosting outage.

Check the ZIP without extracting it

Open the ZIP in your file manager. The first view should show index.html. If it shows one folder first, open that folder. If index.html is inside it, rebuild the archive from the folder contents.

Bad archive
portfolio.zip
└── portfolio-export/
    └── index.html

Good archive
portfolio.zip
├── index.html
└── assets/

Make sure it is really an HTML file

Some editors hide filename extensions. A file displayed as “index.html” may actually be index.html.txt. Turn on file extensions in Finder, Explorer, or your editor and check the full name. The homepage must be spelled exactly index.html, index.htm, or, for a PHP site, index.php.

Check upper and lower case

On many laptops, filenames are treated loosely. On the deployed server, Index.html is not the same as index.html. Rename it to lowercase before creating the archive.

Rebuild and verify

  1. Create an empty folder called publish.
  2. Copy index.html and the folders it references into it.
  3. Open publish/index.html locally.
  4. Select everything inside publish and compress the selection.
  5. Open the resulting ZIP once and confirm its top level shows index.html.
  6. Upload the new archive as a fresh deployment.

Still failing?

Do not add an empty index file just to pass the check. Look at the deployment error and inspect the original export. Website builders sometimes place the actual files in a dist, build, or public folder. That folder’s contents are normally what you need to zip.