On your WordPress website, you have the option to use Gzip. Gzip is a form of compression, which means that if you use this on your website, the size becomes smaller. As a result, your website loads faster, and you can therefore process more traffic and the user experience as a whole becomes more pleasant.
You enable Gzip compression on your WordPress website by following the steps below. Do you host your website on a VPS or another server? Then go directly to step 4.
Step 1
Inside your control panel, go to your WordPress website and click 'Manage'> 'SFTP file management'.

Step 2
Open the 'www' folder by clicking it.

Step 3
Check the files .htaccess and wp-config.php and click 'Download'.

Open the files with a text editor and add the following at the top of your .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# force deflate for mangled headers
# developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/pushing-beyond-gzipping/
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
# HTML, TXT, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, XML, HTC:
<IfModule filter_module>
FilterDeclare COMPRESS
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'text/html'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'text/css'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'text/plain'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'text/xml'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'text/x-component'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'application/javascript'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'application/json'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'application/xml'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'application/xhtml+xml'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'application/rss+xml'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'application/atom+xml'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'application/vnd.ms-fontobject'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'image/svg+xml'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'application/x-font-ttf'"
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE "%{CONTENT_TYPE} = 'font/opentype'"
FilterChain COMPRESS
FilterProtocol COMPRESS DEFLATE change=yes;byteranges=no
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_filter.c>
# Legacy versions of Apache
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css application/json
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml application/xml text/x-component
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/atom+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml application/vnd.ms-fontobject
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf font/opentype
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_deflate.c>
#Apache deflate module is not defined, active the page compression through PHP ob_gzhandler
php_flag output_buffering On
php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler
</IfModule>
and the following immediately after <?php in wp-config.php (i.e. at the top of the file):
ob_start('ob_gzhandler');
Step 5
Save the files and upload them back to your website. For WordPress websites, go back to the 'www' folder (see step 3) in our control panel. First, check the existing .htaccess and wp-config.php file and click 'delete'.
Step 6
Now click 'upload' and upload the updated .htaccess and wp-config.php files. After uploading the files, you will probably have to change the name of the .htaccess file. For example, this can now be called .htaccess.txt; Change it back to .htaccess by checking the file and clicking 'Rename'.
Should you have any questions left regarding this article, do not hesitate to contact our support department. You can reach them via the ‘ContactUs’ button at the bottom of this page.
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