Make your directory Fly: How to GZIP Compress

[gustotelmy]

I am not a programmer however I do have some tricks I can show to people that may not know how to speed up your directory. The answer is to use GZIP or compression technology like the big guys yahoo, msn, and google.

how?
You can easily shave off almost half of your bandwidth and download time for your directory using GZIPPING....

most hosts use it if they use PHP....

how to apply this "mod" (its the easiest of em all!):

open index.php
before ANY code add this:

<?php
ob_start( 'ob_gzhandler' );
?>

You are done!! To get a feel for how much speed you gained and bandwidth check:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Compare before and after....

I gzipped my css file to 1/3 its original size using two things:
1)
http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/main/csscompressor/

and
2)
then changing the css file type from .css to .php and adding
<?php
ob_start ("ob_gzhandler");
header("Content-type: text/css; charset: UTF-8");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate");
$offset = 60 * 60 ;
$ExpStr = "Expires: " .
gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s",
time() + $offset) . " GMT";
header($ExpStr);
?>

to the top of the php file

Make sure you refer to the php (css) file in the following way:
<style type="text/css">
@import url("http://www.yoursite.com/pathto/cssfilename.php");
</style>

im done my first contribution...if you call it that :P

KNOWN PROBLEMS: may influence MSN rankings? (not sure 100%) - please post here if you know anything about Gzipping and MSN SERPS

[gamecock]

Wow, what huge site speed increase! Thanks!

[Moncal]

You're my hero!

I'm on dialup and my directory just literally loaded in 2 seconds!

[dagger]

nice work dude

its better by 60%

[gustotelmy]

you are welcome ! I am trying to give back to this great community...

it works in other php documents too such as your main pages also...

all the best

[David]

Interesting...I will have to test this for 3.0.
I'm starting to get the dev area setup, and soon we'll start combing the forums for miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements.

[Ap0s7le]

David, I was thinking the same thing.



later

[resource]

You can do it from php.ini for every PHP script easily, just edit your php.ini and find zlib.output_compression and set it to On like:
zlib.output_compression = On
Don't touch anything else, and restart your Apache.

Cheers

[gustotelmy]

glad everyone likes it!

the cool thing is it works for people that have browsers enabled for compression ie 99% of them, the rest the server just serves up the un-compressed copy so need to worry about losing visitors...

[gearoid]

Excellent,
Thank you.

[Brandon Sheley]

works for me, thank you

[vignesh_natraj]

great post i didn't use it for phpLD but another php script
the result was great thank you

[kentuckyslone]

Very good! According to http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ my home page went from 19 seconds to 12 seconds for the slowest (14.4) connection speed after making this change.

[gustotelmy]

love to see people using it!

[Boby]

It can be done also from your .htaccess file:

php_flag zlib.output_compression On
php_value zlib.output_compression_level 5

But make sure your hoster and webserver allows it, else you'll get a 500/Internal Server Error if it's disabled.

Boby

[Brandon Sheley]

when this was enabled on 3.0.5 i had description errors from search results :(

[Brandon Sheley]

ya, i get a lot of traffic from msn, so I had to disable this :(

[CyberGrenade]

I noticed a HUGE difference in my Directory. Thanks for the post.

[gustotelmy]

Originally Posted by anon

I was highly pissed off because I was ranked 5th on msn for some extreeeeemely high searched keyword phrases, and now because of the compression, my title is 1. borked to hell 2. I am nowhere in site now.
I was doing between 4-600 in ypn a month and now i barely hit 100.

grrrrrr

hmm are u serious? **censored****censored****censored****censored**. Msn better wake up this is important to speed up the net. I never thought of SEO implications although I consider myself a pretty good SEOer... sorry for this :(

[gustotelmy]

Originally Posted by Boby

It can be done also from your .htaccess file:

php_flag zlib.output_compression On
php_value zlib.output_compression_level 5

But make sure your hoster and webserver allows it, else you'll get a 500/Internal Server Error if it's disabled.

Boby

cool! that is easier