I just added mod_deflate to my server by using the following configuration:

LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so
<IFModule mod_deflate.c>
	SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
	SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
	SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|bz2|sit|rar)$ no-gzip dont-vary
	SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.pdf$ no-gzip dont-vary
	BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
	BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
	BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
</IFModule>

The static parts of my pages now render with about 70% compression, meaning that I’m saving 2/3 of static page bandwidth now. Server load seems fine!

Update: You can also check the status of your site’s compression using this free online tool. For my site, it read:

URL: elliottback.com/wp/
Web server type: Apache/2.2.9 (Fedora)
Compression status: Compressed (gzip)
File Size Comparison (in bytes):

Original size: 36949 bytes
Compressed size: 11023 bytes
Savings in bytes: 25926 bytes

Percentage saved by compression: 71.0%
Transfer speed improvement: 3.3 X

6 Responses to “Website Compression with mod_deflate”

1. Luis says:

   6/9/2007 at 8:05 pm

   Ok, I’m interested, where do I paste this code?

   Reply
2. Elliott Back says:

   6/10/2007 at 10:51 am

   This goes in your httpd.conf file, of course!

   Reply
3. Ken Savage says:

   6/11/2007 at 12:47 am

   Is there any mod_deflate package also to install?

   or just edit the conf file?

   Reply
4. Elliott Back says:

   6/11/2007 at 5:09 am

   It depends; I think the module is standard with apache 2.

   Reply
5. Mikhailov says:

   12/16/2008 at 9:15 am

   Article about mod_deflate settings like on Amazon EC2 AMI
   http://railsgeek.com/2008/12/16/apache2-httpd-i...

   Reply
6. Gzip – Mod Deflate – Site Compression « Kwamroo’s Blog says:

   6/6/2009 at 1:25 am

   [...] To activate Mod Deflate, use the snippet given by Elliott at: Website Compression with mod_deflate –>site comp with Elliott [...]

   Reply