Speed Tips: Turn On Compression

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<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
<FilesMatch "\.(js|css)$">
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

Reader Comments

1. Royads ~

   Hey

   Thanks for sharing the information. I am using the same technique on one of my website to get benefits of compression.

   Header set Expires "Mon, 20 Apr 2012 23:30:00 GMT"
   Header append Cache-Control "public"
    

   I am writing this in .htaccess file in my website root. But when I am testing my website with google page speed it gives me this message.

   Compressing the following resources with gzip could reduce their transfer size by about two thirds (~53.1kB).

   List of all my css and JS files, but not the images file.

   So I have doubt whether it work for CSS and js or not. Because its working for my images contents.

   Can any one explain.

   Thanks a lot in advance.
   Roy

2. Fasst ~

   very helpful speed tips bud… thanks

3. alicious ~

   I normally add php|html to my match for zlib compression, any reason why you haven’t? Is deflate better than zlib for some reason. Also with javascript if you’ve got minified files I imagine it’s not going to help much (if at all).

4. AskApache ~

   Yes. You can test my site out using the http headers tool. Just put “none” in the accept-encoding field.

   Though actually, I am using gzip for compression and I am actually serving both XTHML 1.1 with the application/xhtml+xml content-type, and plain text/html for microsoft browsers that can’t handle it.

   I do have mod_deflate turned on for my javascript and css files though.

5. lu-blog ~

   Will the server in this case send uncompressed content to client if the client didn’t send deflate in HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING?

6. AskApache ~

   @ Jason

   You aren’t using a FilesMatch but other than that I couldn’t tell you, it depends on your server, configuration, and modules.

   @ Prasannah

   This really won’t make that much of a difference to begin with but you can use the http header viewer tool by requesting directly your .css or .js file with this .htaccess compression code on and then with this code off and you should see a difference unless something on your end isn’t working correctly.

7. Prasannah ~

   I don’t see any changes in the page load speed AT ALL! I used this tool (Pingdom) to test my speeds. Any thoughts?

8. Jason ~

   Thanks for your attention:

   My .htaccess file:

   # BEGIN WordPress
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
   # END WordPress
    
   #12 Months
    
   Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public"
    
   Header unset ETag
   FileETag None
    
   # 2 HOURS
    
   Header set Cache-Control "max-age=7200, must-revalidate"
    
   SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

   I am not getting an error. It is just not working with the css and js according to yslow. I was able to set a php.ini file to gzip the php. Although, I am not sure how to do the same thing for the css/js.

9. AskApache ~

   @ jason

   Sounds like you don’t have mod_deflate. I need more info like error messages, how you know its not working, and current .htaccess if I were going to answer.

10. Jason ~

    I am trying to add gzip compression for a friends site which is WP. I already set up compression for php files using php.ini. However, I can’t get the js|CSS to work. Any suggestions. The site is hosted with Godaddy, apache of course.

11. AskApache ~

    @ Everybody

    Sorry for the delay people, I just updated the code to prevent the 500 error, which is telling you that you don’t have the deflate module. At least now you know which module you are missing!

    <IfModule mod_deflate.c>
    <FilesMatch "\.(js|css)$">
    SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
    </FilesMatch>
    </IfModule>

12. Jason ~

    When I added the above code, I was given an internal server error. I am not sure why? Any suggestions?

    Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public"
     
    Header unset ETag
    FileETag None
     
    SetOutputFilter MOD_DEFLATE

13. Isaiah ~

    If you get an 500 internal server error, means that your server don’t have mod_expire.so and mod_headers.so loaded. Edit your httpd.conf and add these lines :

    LoadModule expires_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_expires.so
    LoadModule headers_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_headers.so

    Cheers

14. Paul ~

    My site ALSO throws an Error 500.
    I can’t see a problem with the code, so something has to be set at the server to accept this, right?

15. Ajay ~

    My site throws up a 500 error when I do this. Any suggestions?

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