How To Enable Gzip Compression Apache on Ubuntu 18.04 & 16.04

The mod_deflate module provides the DEFLATE output filter that allows output from your server to be compressed before being sent to the client over the network. Currently mod_deflate is using with newer version of Apache. mod_deflate is the replacement of mod_gzip which was used with older version of Apache.

Step 1 – Enable Gzip Module

Debian based users can enable Gzip module (mod_deflate) using the following command.

sudo a2enmod deflate

Step 2 – Configure Gzip Compression

We can define which file types we need to compressed with below identifier in configuration file.

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css application/javascript 

Add following configuration in Apache Virtual Host to enable gzip compression for your website. You can also add this code to websites .htaccess file under the main document root.

<Directory /var/www/html/>
   <IfModule mod_mime.c>
	AddType application/x-javascript .js
	AddType text/css .css
   </IfModule>
   <IfModule mod_deflate.c>
	AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css application/x-javascript text/x-component text/html text/plain text/xml application/javascript
	<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
		BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
		BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
		BrowserMatch bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
	</IfModule>
    </IfModule>
    Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</Directory>

Step 3 – Testing Compression

Now as your site has been enabled with gzip compression, let’s use one of below online tools to verify gzip is working correctly.

• http://checkgzipcompression.com/
• http://www.whatsmyip.org/http-compression-test/