How to Easily Enable Gzip Compression in WordPress (5 Ways!)

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Published

April 25, 2016

98 Comments

This post was last updated on January 2, 2024.

Enabling Gzip compression (also sometimes called HTTP or browser compression) is one of the most effective ways to make your WordPress site load faster. That’s good news because page loading time influences bounce rate, user experience, search ranking, and much more.

If you work with a computer regularly, you probably already know about compression from zip archives. They allow you to shrink files, e.g. to send them more easily via email. The same is possible for the files that make up your WordPress website, so that visitors can download them faster and see your site more quickly.

Not only does this provide a better experience for visitors and make you site more attractive to search engines, it also results in less server load and bandwidth usage. Good news for those with performance-based hosting packages.

Reason enough to look at this topic in detail, don’t you think? For that reason, in this article, we will go over several ways to enable Gzip compression in WordPress so that your site can be as fast as it deserves to be.

How Does Gzip Compression Work?

Before learning how to add compression to your WordPress website, let’s have a quick look at how this site improvement actually works.

Your Website Is Made Up of Files

As you probably know, most modern websites consist of a mix of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which — on the very basic level — are nothing but text files.

When a visitor requests to see your site, their browser downloads these files and renders the web pages from the code contained within.

So far, so good.

However, because the code is usually created and read by humans, it is usually arranged in a way that makes it easy to read for human eyes. To that end, it contains comments, line breaks, indents, spaces, and other code formatting.

function twentynineteen_widgets_init() {

	register_sidebar(
		array(
			'name'          => __( 'Footer', 'twentynineteen' ),
			'id'            => 'sidebar-1',
			'description'   => __( 'Add widgets here to appear in your footer.', 'twentynineteen' ),
			'before_widget' => '<section id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
			'after_widget'  => '</section>',
			'before_title'  => '<h2 class="widget-title">',
			'after_title'   => '</h2>',
		)
	);

}
add_action( 'widgets_init', 'twentynineteen_widgets_init' );

Machines, like your browser, however, don’t need code to be pretty to be legible. As long as they can parse it, the markup can be in one block or a single line for all they care.

That’s the reason why a good way to make website’s load faster is code minification. This means nothing else than taking away all the formatting that is purely there to make code easier to consume for people.

As you can imagine, this saves a lot of space, which, in turn, makes the files smaller. Smaller files are faster to download, which means they arrive more quickly in your visitors’ browsers, so they can see your website earlier.

Compression Reduces File Size

Compression is one step further than minification. In order to understand how it works, you have to be aware that all code is at least somewhat repetitive. It’s simply in the nature of programming and web design to have lots of recurring patterns and elements.

Compression algorithms like Gzip take advantage of this fact by replacing repetitive patterns with a sort of shorthand. To make this clearer, let’s pretend we have a piece of code that looks like this:

AAA BBBB CCCCC

With a simple system we can reduce the same snippet to this:

3A 4B 5C

Easy to understand, right? We just shortened the recurring characters by showing how often they appear with the help of numbers. It’s simple, and if you know the system, you can easily reprocess this back into its original form.

However, what’s also remarkable is that this small step reduced the code example from twelve characters to merely six. That’s a reduction of 50 percent!

While that’s not actually how Gzip works, the idea behind it is very similar if much more complex. On the very basic level, Gzip is nothing but a library for compressing and decompressing data and it works especially well for text-based content like lines of code. In fact, the algorithm can reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files by as much as 70 to 90 percent.

(Note: It doesn’t work well for images. There are other ways to optimize them.)

Since all modern browsers not only support Gzip but will actually request it automatically, this makes compression a fool-proof method to speed up your WordPress website.

Benefits of Using Gzip Compression

One of the questions that might pop into your mind is, “why use Gzip compression?”. Not in terms of why use compression at all but why this particular one? After all, there are other compression algorithms out there, why not use those? Well, Gzip has a number of things going for itself:

Decent compression rate — While other algorithms can shrink files to smaller sizes, Gzip’s rate of 70 to 90 percent is already very good and close to the maximum of what is possible.
Fast compression and decompression — Where Gzip outshines its competition is the speed at which it can compress and decompress files. That makes it especially suited for ad-hoc applications such as websites.
Low memory requirements — The compression method doesn’t need a lot of resources to do its work, therefore, it’s suitable even for low-end web servers.
Open source — The G in Gzip stands for GNU. That means, it’s open source software like WordPress and therefore free to use and doesn’t need a license.
Universal support — Gzip is one of the most widely used web technologies out there and supported by almost all servers and browsers. For other types of compression, such as Brotli, you need a server that specifically supports them.

In short, Gzip offers a great mix of features and benefits that makes it the go-to solution for website compression.

How to Test Your WordPress Site for Gzip

Before getting to the part where we talk about how to add Gzip compression to your WordPress site, let’s first go over how to test if your website already uses it. A lot of hosting providers offer compression by default, so you don’t want to try to add something you already have.

One of the easiest ways is to use a Gzip testing tool. Simply enter your website URL, hit the button, and it will tell you if your site is already compressed or not.

check gzip compression status for your wordpress site

When you audit your website performance with speed testing tools, they will also tell you if you have compression enabled or not. For example, in PageSpeed Insights, you will either receive a warning to enable text compression under Opportunities or see it in the Passed Audits section.

text compression audit pagespeed insights

GTmetrix will give you similar warnings.

Finally, you can also get this information from your browser. Open up your site in your browser developer tools, go to the Network tab, and reload the page to gather the necessary information. Then, click on any of the files the developer tools list here and look for content-encoding: gzip under Response Headers.

browser developer tools gzip response header

This will show you whether Gzip has been used to download that resource. Make sure to select one that comes from your own URL and not an external service like Google Fonts.

No Gzip active on your site yet? Then let’s talk about how to change that.

How to Enable Gzip Compression on WordPress Websites

The first thing you need to understand about Gzip compression in WordPress is that the platform does not handle compression itself. Instead, it’s something that happens on the server. Therefore, you typically set up this feature by adding code to a configuration file and you have the following options to do so.

1. Have Your Host Set It Up

Don’t want to mess with server files yourself? Then why not ask the people who own the server to do it for you?

If you work with a quality hosting provider, they might offer setting up Gzip compression as part of their standard service. So, if you feel uncomfortable dealing with this topic by yourself, it may be a good idea to give them a call or chat.

hosting provider customer support example

That way, you can lean back and have experts set up this site improvement.

2. Use a WordPress Plugin

WordPress wouldn’t be WordPress if there wasn’t some sort of plugin solution out there to set up Gzip compression. In fact, it’s usually a standard feature in any caching plugin.

W3 Total Cache

In W3 Total Cache, you can find a check box to add HTTP compression to your WordPress website under Performance > Browser Cache.

Make sure it is checked and, if you make any changes, don’t forget to save them!

WP Super Cache

Another plugin option is WP Super Cache. If you have it on your site, you can find an option to Compress pages so they’re served more quickly to visitors under Settings > WP Super Cache > Advanced.

Check it, save, and you have Gzip enabled on your WordPress site.

WP Fastest Cache

Users of WP Fastest Cache find the option to switch on compression right on the first page of the plugin’s settings menu.

WP-Optimize

The WP-Optimize plugin also makes Gzip compression possible on your site. You find the setting under WP-Optimize > Cache > Gzip compression.

Simply click the big button that says Enable and the plugin does all the rest by itself.

As you can see, there are plenty of solutions to choose from. But they are not the only ones.

3. Enable Gzip Compression via .htaccess

If you don’t want to go the plugin route, you can also set up compression directly on your server by hand. This avoids potential plugin conflicts and keeps you from installing any other functionality on your site when all you want is text compression.

So, how do you do it?

If your site is running on an Apache servers, you’ll enable compression via a file called .htaccess (yes, including the dot). It normally contains other important server instructions. For example, WordPress adds rewrite rules to .htaccess to enable different permalink structures.

Other things this file can do are redirects, protecting files and folders from access, and much more. Here’s how to use it to enable Gzip compression.

Find And Edit .htaccess

To make any changes to your file, you first need to find it. That’s not always easy, because it is hidden by default. The easiest way to access .htaccess is via FTP but you can also use cPanel or any other admin interface.

In this case, we will start by opening our FTP client of choice and connecting it to the server. .htaccess is usually located in the root directory of your website’s folder. However, as mentioned, it is most often invisible.

In FileZilla, you can change that under Server > Force showing hidden files. Your software might have the option somewhere else.

After you have located it, you can edit the file like any other. In FileZilla this means right-click and then View/Edit.

Alternatively, you may also download .htaccess to your computer and make changes on your hard drive. In fact, you should probably do that anyway in order to have a backup in place (safety first!).

If you go the download route, be aware that your operating system might also hide the file and you won’t see it unless you change your display options.

In Windows, these are located in the Folder Options. In that menu, find the View panel and then enable Show hidden files, folders, and drives.

If you are using MacOS, simply press Cmd+Shift+. (the dot) to make invisible files visible so you can edit them.

Add the Necessary Code

Overall, enabling Gzip compression is not that challenging. All it takes is adding the following piece of code to the .htaccess file (code credit goes to GTmetrix):

<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

	# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers)
	BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
	BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
	BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
	Header append Vary User-Agent
</IfModule>

Place it somewhere outside the # BEGIN WordPress and # END WordPress brackets.

gzip compression markup in wordpress htaccess file

While it will work either way, if you put the code inside the brackets, there is a chance WordPress will overwrite them.

In case you have problems with the code above, you can also use the alternative below.

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
AddType x-font/otf .otf
AddType x-font/ttf .ttf
AddType x-font/eot .eot
AddType x-font/woff .woff
AddType image/x-icon .ico
AddType image/png .png
AddType text/css .css

That’s pretty much all it takes. Save and upload your file and Gzip should be ready. However, in order to be sure, let’s verify it is actually doing its job.

Verify Gzip Compression Is Working

Once you have set up compression on your WordPress site, the last step is to test if it actually works. We’ve already covered how to do that, so you can use the tools mentioned above for that purpose.

If you don’t see a change right away, that doesn’t necessarily mean you made a mistake. It might just take some time for the compression to take effect (especially with larger sites) or for the site cache to update. In that case, simply try again a little later.

If everything works, congratulations! You just took a big step in speeding up your WordPress website.

4. Using Gzip Compression on NGINX Servers

As mentioned, .htaccess is the configuration file for Apache servers. If your site is on an NGINX server, you need to edit a file called nginx.conf instead and also add this code snippet to it:

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

You can find more information in the NGINX documentation. Aside from that, everything else stays the same.

5. Compress Your WordPress Site on an IIS Server

If you are running your website on a Microsoft IIS server, please refer to their documentation for how to switch on Gzip compression for your server version.

http compression setup windows iis server

Additional Considerations to Keep in Mind

Be aware that your website likely consists of more than what is located on your own server. Most modern websites use at least some external assets, such as custom fonts, jQuery, or web analytics. You might also be using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to provide some files to your visitors.

To have your site load as fast as possible (and avoid getting a warning that it lacks Gzip compression), make sure that these assets are also compressed. You can check this with the same tools mentioned above, by inputting the URL where your external assets are located.

That way, your WordPress site is not a mixed bag when it comes to compression. By the way, here are a few additional ways to speed up your WordPress website:

Speed testing your website — To find out where the bottlenecks lie.
Reducing server requests — What’s faster than downloading files that have been compressed? Not having to download them in the first place!
WordPress speed optimization without plugins — Because you don’t need plugins to have a blazingly fast website.
Speed Up the WordPress Back End — Because it’s not just about your website’s front end.
Core Web Vitals — Learn how to improve Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.

Final Thoughts: Gzip Compression for WordPress

Never underestimate how much site speed can affect your site’s popularity among visitors and search engines. How fast your pages load is a sign of quality and smart website owners do their best to make their WordPress websites as fast as possible.

Gzip compression is a simple but effective tool that can make a huge difference in this area. It is also easy to implement so there is no excuse not to take advantage of it. Hopefully, this guide helped you do just that. Now it’s time to move on to all the other ways you can improve your site’s performance.

Have you enabled Gzip for your website? How did you do it? Any thoughts or additional tips? Please tell us about it in the comment section!

There are 98 comments

July 26, 2016 #

Alliyah

Greate article- just what I needed. Thanks Nick!
- July 26, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy to hear Alliyah and thanks for the comment!
August 31, 2016 #

Ahmad

Thank’s a lot Nick! The .htaccess method worked great to my site. It increased from 41% to 66% according to pagespeed tools.

Now one challenge left as below, and I’m still looking for the trick. Any recommend?

Should Fix:
Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
Show how to fix
- September 5, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Ahmad, happy to hear Gzip worked for you. To solve the other issue, I recommend loading scripts asynchronously or moving everything that is not needed for the initial render to the footer. Google has a tutorial for that: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/BlockingJS. Good luck!
September 17, 2016 #

Sumit

Thanks for the post it is really helpfull. Can you please reconfirm that we can put the code in the starting or in the ending it will not matter.
- September 19, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Sumit,
  
  I’m not sure which starting or ending you are talking about. The .htaccess file? When I was testing it, it didn’t really matter where I put the code.
  You can also easily test it out for yourself on a test site.
  
  Let me know if there’s anything I can help with further.
September 22, 2016 #

Juliette Giannesini

Thank you for the super comprehensive article that helps even non-tech persons like me 🙂

I’m struggling with editing the .htaccess file (well, I did it just file, it’s just that compression still doesn’t work). I’m trying to find a fix… but at least I understood what I was doing thanks to you!
- October 3, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Juliette, I’m happy to hear you found the article helpful. Don’t worry, I found .htaccess confusing in the beginning as well. You will get the hand of it in time. Keep up the good work!
September 23, 2016 #

Ola

Very helpful, thank you! Finally got gzip to work!
- October 3, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Yay, congrats Ola!
October 4, 2016 #

Lawrence Ip

Worked a treat! Dropped the code into my .htaccess file and Voila! I’m using with the Hyper Cache plugin. The site’s soooo much faster 😉
- October 7, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Lawrence, happy to hear everything worked as it should! Enjoy your fast site.
November 1, 2016 #

davinci

Thank you so much.
- November 10, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  You are welcome!
December 3, 2016 #

Bamboo Bazaar

Hi Nick, thanks for explaining Gzip and how compress via a plugin. I’ve followed the steps and installed W3 total cache, not sure how to alter htaccess, bit too technical for me.
- December 5, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey there, yeah it can feel a bit technical in the beginning but once you have done it once, it’s no problem anymore. However, using a plugin is also a valid alternative. Cheers!
December 5, 2016 #

hichem

merci bcp bcp
- December 6, 2016 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  No problem!
January 26, 2017 #

mukesh jakhar

This is awesome…make my weekend….thanks man..
- January 30, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  You’re most welcome.
February 2, 2017 #

Chase

Nick, I’ve input the first piece of code and I am still getting an error message stating that Gzip compression isn’t enabled for several application/javascript items. The server readout says Apache, any advice?
- February 23, 2017 #
  
  NSchaferhoff1234
  
  Hey Chase, any chance the files that are not being compressed are hosted on another server and not yours?
February 8, 2017 #

loren

Thanks … done it via htaccess
February 9, 2017 #

Aron

Hi and thank you for that post this i amazing, however I did it and I tested it on checkgzipcompression.com and there i t said it is working (I used your first codes for the .htaccess file) but in google test it still shows that I need to fix it, how long should it take for it to show that it is enabled?

I also tested it on the other two sites you gave and both said it has it enabled
- February 14, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Aron, see my answer to your other comment. Cheers, Nick
February 10, 2017 #

Jackson

Thanks! Really helpful, well written and easy to follow 🙂
- February 14, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy to help, Jackson! Thanks for the comment.
February 13, 2017 #

Aron

I did it but in the google test it still asks me to do it in the other test it shows as it is working, any help?
- February 14, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Aron, in Google Pagespeed Insights look at the files not being compressed. Any chance they are coming from another server? I have the same issue on one of my sites but the files that Google complains about are actually loaded remotely from Jetpack so there is nothing I can do about it. Might be the same for you. Cheers!
March 10, 2017 #

Lorenzo

cool, thanks!
- March 13, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Thank you for the comment!
March 17, 2017 #

Ivan

Hey Nick,
thank you for the article, it helped right away!
- March 22, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy to hear that, Ivan! Thanks for the comment.
March 23, 2017 #

AndroidRev

Now, this is a lifesaver. Thanks, Nick. I have left the high 70s to …. much higher. Lol.
- March 23, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy to hear that! Glad I could be a part of it.
March 27, 2017 #

s1288

Thank you so much nick so helpfull
- March 28, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy to hear it!
March 29, 2017 #

Dhruv

Thank you so much! This was pretty easy to follow, even for a non-coder like me 🙂
- March 29, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Glad to hear that, happy I could help!
June 7, 2017 #

Daniel Crabbe

anyone else having problems with svgs?
in .htaccess

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/svg+xml

Not working for SVGs ?
‘Compressing resources with gzip or deflate can reduce the number of bytes sent over the network.
Enable compression for the following resources to reduce their transfer size by 31.9KiB (71% reduction).
‘
June 19, 2017 #

moha

Hi, i would like to thank you for great topic
but when i add the code in .htaccess
theoretically the speed in speed test site is incresed, but my website
http://www.resultsmasr.com
became very slowly ?!
June 27, 2017 #

Sanjay Kumar

Thanks Nick Its work well for me
- June 27, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy to hear that!
July 2, 2017 #

Braj

I have installed wp super cache in my wordpress site http://www.excelias.in and used the above mentioned option but still google pagespeed says that there is no gzip compression. Do i need to do it through htaccess file or something else?
- July 3, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Braj, if you have it enabled through WP Super Cache, that should be enough. If it’s not working, there might be a problem with the plugin on your site.
July 4, 2017 #

aravind

thank u so much sir
- July 4, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  You are most welcome, sir!
July 6, 2017 #

Robert

Thanks dear for this tips. It’ll sure help all the Beginners and traffic suffering Bloggers. I’ve learnt a lot from your this and previous posts. Thanks once more.
- July 6, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy I could help, Robert!
July 26, 2017 #

Nadir Ziat

Hello, I added the code into my Htaccess but gtmetrix and google insight still request Gzip compression. On GTmetrix I have 25/100 what is wrong with it?

Regards
September 2, 2017 #

Geekyard

Thanks it helped me to optimise the site speed.
September 8, 2017 #

AISSA BOUGUERN

Thank you so much,
Your htaccess code helped me a lot!
- September 11, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Glad to hear that!
September 15, 2017 #

Steven

Thanks, your advice helped my home page loading speed a lot but the rest of the web pages are broken. Any idea why this would be?
- September 18, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Steven, what do you mean by broken? And was it a direct result of enabling compression?
October 9, 2017 #

apnahousing

This information is Excellent. I understand and respect your clear-cut points. I am impressed with your writing style and how well you express your thoughts.thanks for this helpful information about the Gzip compression files for the wordpress site plugins and .htaaccess….
October 25, 2017 #

adroitclipping

this is really very useful post for me, thank you very much for sharing this important post. Thanks again
November 17, 2017 #

Marc Gutt

You can use wildcards to compress your code:
http://www.programmierer-forum.de/komprimierung-bei-hetzner-aktivieren-t376408.htm
- November 21, 2017 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Thanks for the tip, Marc!
January 4, 2018 #

Pat

Thanks for the clear and helpful advice. However, I added first one and later the other text blocks to the .httaccess file, left it for a few hours, and still get the message that gzip is not enabled. Even tried it using W3 Cache plugin, being sure to turn on caching for html text. Same message. I can see that my host server is running apache. Any ideas what could be wrong? My site is running soooo sloooow that anything I can do to speed it up would be a help.
- January 5, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Pat, that sounds unusual. I think it would be best to get in contact with your hosting provider and ask them directly. Cheers!
January 10, 2018 #

Sean H.

Nick, thank you for a great explaination of GZip and how to use it. Turned out I have it already installed, but your site was the perfect explaination for my modest level of design.
- January 11, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Sean, thanks for the nice feedback! Happy to hear you found it helpful.
January 20, 2018 #

Charles Gichuki

That was a very very helpful article, Much appreciated.
- January 22, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Your comment is much appreciated as well. Cheers!
February 19, 2018 #

Mark Flint

Brilliant! Took my page speed up a massive notch. Thanks for the advice. Drop me a message if you ever want to write a guest blog on my website.
- February 20, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Glad it worked for you, Mark! And will do.
February 20, 2018 #

Vertex

I really like the content of this article. I have tried and run well. Thanks.
- February 20, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy to hear that. Thanks for the nice comment!
February 24, 2018 #

Marietta

Thank you! Changing .htaccess worked like a charm – even though I’m usually no pro at changing hidden settings and the like. You made me very happy! 🙂
- February 26, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happiness in my readers is what I strive for. Congratulations for improving your site!
February 26, 2018 #

Prabin tmg

my GZIP is not enabled by keeping this code in .htaccess plz give me any idea.
- February 26, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  If it’s not working, get in touch with your host. They might have something in place that prevents the code from working. Good luck!
March 22, 2018 #

neo

nice verry helpfull
July 3, 2018 #

Said

Merci, c’est très utile
July 27, 2018 #

Ankit

Great. I implemented all the techniques mentioned above on my blog and now its loading fully in just 1.2 Seconds.

Thanks Nick.
- July 31, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Happy to hear the post helped you, 1.2 seconds is great! Thanks for the comment.
August 17, 2018 #

Radha

use the .htaccess code and enable your gzip compression.
# BEGIN GZIP COMPRESSION

mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*

# END GZIP COMPRESSION
August 18, 2018 #

Vijay

Enable gzip compression F (0)

Still showing error, plz check my link : http://www.cloudems.in/higher-education-management-system-software/
- August 21, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Vijay, please check with your hosting provider for assistance. They should be able to help you out.
August 22, 2018 #

BTM Laundry

Hey Nick,

My site laod very fast because I optimized it using the tips given by you in your another article.

But how can I confirm that whether Gzip is enabled or not for below url

//redacted

And one doubt here is gzip is page specific or domain specific?
- August 23, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey there, I input your URL into the tool mentioned in the article and you are good. Aside from that, if you set Gzip up in your .htaccess file, it is active for your entire site/domain. Cheers!
October 19, 2018 #

Yuval

because it already contained IfModule, I wanted to say (it disappeared from my comment)
October 28, 2018 #

Aleksandar

Tnx man, this is amazing text. It is very, very helpfull!
November 8, 2018 #

Montana

i have the super cache plugin with gzip compression but on gtmetrix it still says i do not have it
- November 9, 2018 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  I think I have heard of that problem before. Have you checked the support section of WP Super Cache?
December 19, 2018 #

wivet

This was very helpful. Thanks.
December 29, 2018 #

mike

hi i’m getting this error

500 internal server error

after pasting the first code into .htaccess file

the compression works with test, but the site’s is done, and gtmatrix is getting errors too to show the results.
- January 2, 2019 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Mike, sorry to hear you are experiencing errors. Did you try the second code snippet?
July 12, 2019 #

Jeffrey

Hi Nick,

Definitely this is a great piece of article that really helps in teaching on managing the speed of the website. I have took test on GTMetrix and Pingdom Tools and after insertion of the codes to .htaccess and re-tested on the speed again, it really improves alot

Thanks.
- July 22, 2019 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Thanks, Jeffrey, glad it worked for you and thanks for taking the time to comment!
November 4, 2019 #

Anik

Thanks for this article it’s helping me to increase my website speed.
November 23, 2019 #

Tarequl Islam

That was a great and comprehensive article…all the tips enumerated and explained will be helpful for those who are wise enough to tap from it. Any business nowadays without social media signals and presence may not make it to the outermost, and investment too is part of the key to success in business. Keep up the good work
September 1, 2020 #

Rupesh Dahal

my GZIP is not enabled by keeping this code in .htaccess plz give me any idea.
- September 2, 2020 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Have you tried both code snippets and also tested one of the plugin solutions?
July 27, 2022 #

Basant Pangeni

Hey I am unable to compress my site using the steps that you provided above. Please help me as I got low pagespeed score.
- July 28, 2022 #
  
  Nick Schäferhoff
  
  Hey Basant, sorry to hear you are having difficulties. Can you give me some more details, especially which method you used to compress your site? By the way, both Google PageSpeed Insights and GiftofSpeed say that you have (Brotli) compression active for your site already.