What is Gzip Compression

Gzip is a file format and software application used on Unix and Unix-like systems to compress HTTP content before it’s served to a client. The process has been known to shrink a file by up to 80 percent, resulting in improved page load time, decreased bandwidth consumption and reduced SSL overhead (due to a decrease in the number of roundtrips during a SSL handshake).

File types associated with gzip include:

.gz – Indicates a file extension compressed by the gzip algorithm.
.tar file, tarball – A format used to store multiple files for archiving, but not for compression. Gzip can be used to compress .tar files.
.tgz, .tar.gz, .gz file – Indicates a .tar file that’s been compressed by gzip.

Enabling the Gzip Command

Gzip can be applied to a number of different platforms, including those detailed below:

WordPress

You can enable gzip on WordPress by using a caching plugin that supports gzip, or by enabling gzip on your web server via the .htaccess file.

Apache

To enable gzip on an Apache web server, add the gzip compression commands inside the mod_deflate module at the end of the .htaccess file.

For example:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain 
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml 
</IfModule>

NGINX

To enable gzip on NGINX, the following code must be added to the nginx.conf file:

gzip on;
gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";
gzip_vary on;
gzip_types text/plain text/css text/javascript image/svg+xml image/x-icon application/javascript application/x-javascript;

Verifying Gzip Activation

After enabling gzip, the next step is to verify that it’s compressing your outbound files. This is done either by using any number of online tools, or by checking HTTP response headers in a browser, e.g., by making sure that in the Network > Headers tab in Google Chrome, Gzip is displayed under the Content-Encoding header.

Additionally, it’s possible to check HTTP response headers using cURL, by entering in the following command:

curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I https://sitename.com

In the response, gzip should be listed in the Content-Encoding header:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 01:12:36 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8…
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip

Using Gzip in Conjunction with a CDN

Almost all content delivery networks (CDNs) provide automated file compression with gzip. This relieves you of the need to verify that compression is indeed taking place.

Additionally, CDNs typically support a number of front-end optimization techniques that can be used in conjunction with gzip to further shrink outgoing file size.

These include minification, an optimization process in which elements such as white spaces and repeated variable names are trimmed from a file’s code, potentially reducing its size by half before compression. Most CDNs automatically minify much of a site’s content on-the-fly, including all JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

While minification before gzipping a file might seem redundant, it’s been shown to shrink tarfile size by an additional 5-10%. Because CDNs perform both minification and gzip compression, they minimize the size of the code files delivered to your users, significantly reducing page load time.

Gzip