mod_gzip and barnson.org

I just enabled mod_gzip for barnson.org, brusco.org, and outlanders-outfit.org. I hope you notice a really big speedup! gzip compression is supported on newer versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and other browsers.

Setting it up was a really straightforward process on this FreeBSD server (as root):

  1. # cd /usr/ports/www/mod_gzip/
  2. # make
  3. # make install
  4. I then edited /usr/local/etc/apache/httpd.conf and removed the pound sign from the front of these two lines:
    • LoadModule gzip_module libexec/apache/mod_gzip.so
    • AddModule mod_gzip.c
  5. Then I tacked the following lines onto the end of the httpd.conf:

    # [mod_gzip configuration]

I just enabled mod_gzip for barnson.org, brusco.org, and outlanders-outfit.org. I hope you notice a really big speedup! gzip compression is supported on newer versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and other browsers.

Setting it up was a really straightforward process on this FreeBSD server (as root):

  1. # cd /usr/ports/www/mod_gzip/
  2. # make
  3. # make install
  4. I then edited /usr/local/etc/apache/httpd.conf and removed the pound sign from the front of these two lines:
    • LoadModule gzip_module libexec/apache/mod_gzip.so
    • AddModule mod_gzip.c
  5. Then I tacked the following lines onto the end of the httpd.conf:

    # [mod_gzip configuration]
    mod_gzip_on Yes
    mod_gzip_minimum_file_size 300
    mod_gzip_maximum_file_size 0
    mod_gzip_maximum_inmem_size 100000
    mod_gzip_keep_workfiles No
    mod_gzip_temp_dir /tmp
    mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
    mod_gzip_item_include file \.htm$
    mod_gzip_item_include file \.html$
    mod_gzip_item_include file \.php$
    mod_gzip_item_include file \.pl$
    mod_gzip_item_include file \.cgi$
    mod_gzip_item_include file \.phps$
    mod_gzip_item_include mime text/.*

That’s all there is to it! And the speedup, even on my DSL line, is pretty amazing. I’m in the middle of downloading a bunch of stuff at the moment, and the barnson.org pages squeak through so much faster it’s insane! I did several tests with it turned on and off, and gzipping pages to my Mozilla browser is noticeably faster. It should reduce main-page load times for people on modems from about 22 seconds to around 7 seconds.