In today’s fast-paced online world, speed is key. Visitors to your website expect pages to load quickly, and search engines reward fast-loading sites with higher rankings. One way to speed up your website is to enable GZIP compression for WordPress, a technique that reduces the size of files sent from your server to a visitor’s browser. GZIP compression can significantly reduce the time it takes for your site to load, leading to a better user experience and improved search engine rankings.
In this blog post, we’ll show you how to enable GZIP compression for WordPress site. First, we’ll explain what GZIP compression is and how it works. Then, we’ll guide you through the process of checking if GZIP compression is already enabled on your site and, if not, how to enable it. Finally, we’ll show you how to verify that GZIP compression is working properly on your site. By the end of this post, you’ll have the knowledge you need to improve your site’s speed and performance with GZIP compression.
Checking if GZIP Compression is Enabled on Your WordPress Site
Before you enable GZIP compression for WordPress site, it’s important to check if it’s already enabled. Here’s how to do it:
- Visit your website and open the developer tools in your web browser. You can usually do this by right-clicking on the page and selecting “Inspect” or “Inspect Element.”
- Navigate to the “Network” tab in the developer tools.
- Reload your website by pressing F5 or the refresh button in your browser.
- Look for the “Content-Encoding” column in the network request list. If GZIP compression is enabled, you should see “gzip” listed in this column for all requests.
If you see “gzip” listed for all requests, congratulations! GZIP compression is already enabled on your WordPress site. You can skip ahead to the section on verifying that GZIP compression is working properly.
If you don’t see “gzip” listed for all requests, don’t worry – it’s still possible to enable GZIP compression on your site. Keep reading to learn how.
Enabling GZIP Compression on Your WordPress Site
If you’ve determined that GZIP compression is not currently enabled on your WordPress site, don’t worry – enabling it is a fairly simple process. Here are the steps to follow:
- Log in to your WordPress site’s cPanel or access your site’s files using an FTP client.
- Find the .htaccess file in the root directory of your WordPress site. If you can’t find it, create a new file named “.htaccess” in the root directory.
- Open the .htaccess file in a text editor.
- Add the following lines of code to the top of the file:
- Save the .htaccess file and exit your text editor.
Enable GZIP on Nginx Web Server
add the directives given below to your nginx.conf file. Typically, you can find this file in your server’s /etc/nginx/nginx.conf location.
# enables GZIP compression
gzip on;
# compression level (1-9)
# 6 is a good compromise between CPU usage and file size
gzip_comp_level 6;
# minimum file size limit in bytes to avoid negative compression outcomes
gzip_min_length 256;
# compress data for clients connecting via proxies
gzip_proxied any;
# directs proxies to cache both the regular and GZIP versions of an asset
gzip_vary on;
# disables GZIP compression for ancient browsers that don't support it
gzip_disable "msie6";
# compress outputs labeled with the following file extensions or MIME-types
# text/html MIME-type is enabled by default and need not be included
gzip_types
application/atom+xml
application/geo+json
application/javascript
application/x-javascript
application/json
application/ld+json
application/manifest+json
application/rdf+xml
application/rss+xml
application/vnd.ms-fontobject
application/wasm
application/x-web-app-manifest+json
application/xhtml+xml
application/xml
font/eot
font/otf
font/ttf
image/bmp
image/svg+xml
text/cache-manifest
text/calendar
text/css
text/javascript
text/markdown
text/plain
text/xml
text/vcard
text/vnd.rim.location.xloc
text/vtt
text/x-component
text/x-cross-domain-policy;Enable GZIP on Apache Web Server
Important: Make sure that the mod_filter module is active on your server. Most web hosts have it enabled by default, but if it’s not, the AddOutputFilterByType directive won’t work and may throw up an HTTP 500 error. You can check your server’s error logs if you have any issues after adding the code snippet below.
Add the code above only after the existing directives of your .htaccess file. Save the file and then check whether it enables GZIP compression on your server.
<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 ancient 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>That’s it! GZIP compression is now enabled on your WordPress site. However, it’s important to verify that it’s working properly – keep reading to learn how.
Verifying that GZIP Compression is Working on Your WordPress Site
Now that you’ve enabled GZIP compression on your WordPress site, it’s important to verify that it’s actually working. Here’s how to do it:
- Visit your website and open the developer tools in your web browser.
- Navigate to the “Network” tab in the developer tools.
- Reload your website by pressing F5 or the refresh button in your browser.
- Look for the “Content-Encoding” column in the network request list. For all requests, you should see “gzip” listed in this column.
If you see “gzip” listed for all requests, congratulations – GZIP compression is working properly on your WordPress site! This means that your website’s files are being compressed before they’re sent to visitors’ browsers, which can make your site faster and more efficient.
If you don’t see “gzip” listed for all requests, double-check that you followed the steps correctly in the previous section. If you’re still having trouble, you may need to reach out to your hosting provider for assistance.
Enabling GZIP compression is a simple way to improve your WordPress site’s performance and user experience. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can make sure that your site is taking advantage of this powerful compression technology.
Conclusion
Enabling GZIP compression on your WordPress site is a simple and effective way to improve its performance and user experience. By compressing your site’s files before they’re sent to visitors’ browsers, you can reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred and speed up your site’s load times.
In this guide, we’ve walked you through the process of checking if GZIP compression is enabled on your WordPress site, and if not, how to enable it using the .htaccess file. We’ve also shown you how to verify that GZIP compression is working properly on your site.
By following these steps, you can ensure that your WordPress site is taking advantage of GZIP compression to provide a faster and more efficient experience for your visitors. If you have any questions or run into any issues along the way, don’t hesitate to reach out to your hosting provider or a WordPress expert for assistance.
We hope this guide has been helpful, and that you’re now on your way to a faster, more optimized WordPress site!
