How do I enable gzip compression on my website Print


You can decrease load times on your website by compressing the contents.

You can do this on any website (home-made, WordPress, Joomla, etc.) with gzip using the Apache module mod_deflate.
To do this, you first need to create a file in your public_html directory called ".htaccess" or edit your existing .htaccess file.

The .htaccess file is a configuration file in which you can configure many things, of which compression is just one.

In this .htaccess file, you can specify types of file to be compressed with directives like this (just keep the lines for the file types you want to compress):

#Deflate
#Make Sure Resources Are Compressed In Transit
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype

# For Olders Browsers Which Can Not Handle Compression
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
  BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
</IfModule>

 

The full documentation on using this mod_deflate can be found here:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_deflate.html

Alternatively, in a PHP based website you can implement gzip compression directly in the code.

This is done using ob_gzhandler which is done as part of the ob_start function. The full documentation on this can be found here:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.ob-gzhandler.php


Was this answer helpful?

« Back
Venatour Sports Travel

Encode have continually surpassed themselves in developing our new website. Their patience in learning and understanding what we needed from a website to provide the best service to our customers has been beneficial on so many levels. I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for intelligent solutions to their web, seo or business needs.

Lisa Cooley

Positive: Professionalism, Quality, Responsiveness, Value

Working with Neil is a dream; he's fast, efficient, responsive and full of website knowledge and advice. He won't baffle you with IT over load and will be honest about the best working solution.

Highly recommended!

Ellie Stevenson Author

Positive: Professionalism, Value

Encode and I had a very useful discussion about Wordpress and related issues at no cost to myself. He gave me some very helpful information and answered the questions I had.

I learnt quite a lot! Thank you.

Silvia Boev

Positive: Professionalism, Quality, Responsiveness, Value

I am very excited to work again with Neil. His attention to detail is second to none. I have seen his work in action in the past and he is great. I love his calm approach and his patient guidance to non-tech people like me. I would highly highly reccommend him!

Dr Fuz

Neil is the best! He has sorted out all our business emails and everything runs a great deal better now. Website issues are now a thing of the past as Neil has introduced a maintenance programme to ensure the site is always working optimally and any content changes are actioned pretty much immediately.

Highly recommended!!

H Scott-Brown

'Encode' provided my hosting and domain transfers. They were able to deal with the technicalities of the transfer in a particularly speedy manner, taking all the worry of the transfer, domain issues DNS and nameserver headaches as well as the migration. A couple of emails, and phone call meant it was done smoothly, swiftly and efficiently. All I can say is I'm really please they were recommended to me. Thank you

Spinner