Adding GZIP Compression To Your Site Via .htaccess : Jamie Huskisson Blog

Adding GZIP Compression To Your Site Via .htaccess

Posted on April 17th, 2005 in .htaccess, articles

Just thought i’d post this little tidbit of code for you. Paste it into your .htaccess file and it will enable GZIP across all pages in that directory:

php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler

Hows it do it?

This line of code sets the output handler, or output buffer as ob_gzhandler. This sets the ob_start as “ob_gzhandler” so the code doesn’t have to be entered. Normally you would have to enter this in the PHP to do GZIP Compression:

// In the head:
ob_start(“ob_gzhandler”);
// At the bottom:
ob_end_flush();

What is GZIP?

GZIP is a very> effective way of keeping your bandwidth down when having large HTML/PHP pages. What it does, is compresses the page thats being sent to the user viewing your site, when the user recieves this compressed version of the page it uncompresses the page, and views it in the full form.

But how much does this effect the user?

It doesn’t effect the user at all, except for Internet Explorer 0.01 users still on Windows 3.11 of course…

And what about my server?

Once you originally implement this, yes, you will notice changes in your processors activity. But after a day or two you’ll soon see the processor levels lower.

How much of a difference does it really make?

The answer, is roughly 80-90% of your raw code file being sent to the user is removed.

A good implementation case study for this is Pixel2Life. Before GZIP it had a 160kb file output and after a 14kb file output. This of course is brilliant for the 56kers, which alot of us forget about.

Please note

GZIP does not compress images, just the raw code being output and sent to the user.

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There are 30 responses to this post so far

Pat wrote:

This is actually very helpful, and i implimented it on my site. And your right about the cpu spike, although things are looking to calm down now. Thanks for the info jay!

# April 22nd, 2005 at 5:29pm
Jay wrote:

Your more than welcome :) Its good to see people getting good use from tutorials

# April 22nd, 2005 at 5:33pm
Ben wrote:

I just implemented this on my website and as soon as I uploaded it, I started to get a 50o Internal server error. Hope this’ll go away soon just as a result of the cpu spike.

# April 22nd, 2005 at 11:00pm
Jay wrote:

You may not have GZIP enabled on your server if that is the case.. i’m not sure why you would get internal server errors to be honest..

# April 22nd, 2005 at 11:05pm
Ben wrote:

I made sure, and I do have GZIP enabled.
It says in my phpinfo thing that of the loaded modules, mod_gzip is one of them. That is GZIP, right…?

# April 22nd, 2005 at 11:37pm
Jay wrote:

No this is the Apache mod_gzip that runs server side and requires no code :)

To set this up please contact your server operator

This is ob_gzhandler :)

# April 22nd, 2005 at 11:48pm
Ben wrote:

Ah, damnit.

Ok, thanks. :)

# April 22nd, 2005 at 11:55pm
Ben wrote:

Is there a way to tell if I have this enabled or not without contacting my server just yet, or is the server error a good sign that I don’t? :)

# April 23rd, 2005 at 12:01am
Jay wrote:

Ask them if output buffering is enabled, they may have disabled it to save memory

# April 23rd, 2005 at 12:14am
Ben wrote:

I submitted a support ticket and they said that a 500 server error means I have a problem in the syntax. Annoying. I copied right off of your site. Hmm…

# April 23rd, 2005 at 12:46am
Jay wrote:

you did only copy the first box into your htaccess yes?

# April 23rd, 2005 at 12:48am
Ben wrote:

Yeah.
Now this means I just have to enter ob_start(), right? Without the “ob_gzhandler.”

I’ll play around with it when I go upstairs, where everything I have that has my website is. Right now I just used Notepad really quickly to create it and uploaded it through my host’s file uploader.

# April 23rd, 2005 at 12:58am
Jay wrote:

No, just adding this to your .htaccess file should work fine :)

# April 23rd, 2005 at 12:59am
Ben wrote:

I figured it out. For some reason when I pasted it on my dad’s computer (which I’m on until about 6PM when I go back up to my computer) I pasted the 1: as well for some odd reason and also didn’t notice it. God that’s stupidity for you. :)

# April 23rd, 2005 at 1:56am
Eagle wrote:

oops, in my previous post, php code didn’t get displayed, i’ll use &HtmlEntity; code to display the “less than” symbol and “greater than” symbol.

<?php ob_start (“ob_gzhandler”);
header(“Content-type: text/css; charset: UTF-8″);
?>

# July 14th, 2005 at 9:02pm
Eagle wrote:

above php code is intended for to use in the top of CSS files

# July 20th, 2005 at 9:34pm
AlenÃƒÆ’Ã‚Â´nimo wrote:

Your hint is almost essencial! I’ve implemented right now and I will analyse the bandwitch usage to compare…

My entire site is PHP based. Thanks… :D

# July 28th, 2005 at 9:24pm
ORION wrote:

thanks, works wonders :D

# September 14th, 2005 at 1:39pm
Av wrote:

wow, you’re a life saver :o VERY useful to cut down big files like prototype JS

# March 22nd, 2007 at 10:30pm
Tim Cinel wrote:

Heh, I’m also using it to shift heavy JS like prototype. It’s heavy but I still love it :) Oh it’s good for big CSS files, too.

Thanks for the code :)

# May 24th, 2008 at 3:20pm
Aikindo wrote:

Thanks for the info.

Since I have access to .htaccess, can I also compress the .css files via .htaccess?

Thanks once again

# August 5th, 2008 at 5:32am
Suresh P wrote:

Hi,

will the above .htaccess code(php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler) also compress the Javascript / CSS files too?

thanks,
Suresh P

# November 12th, 2008 at 3:19pm
Jangla wrote:

When I stick this in my .htaccess file the site just outputs a bunch of garbled ascii characters – like when you try and open a compiled file in notepad or something.

# December 2nd, 2008 at 10:50am
DFL wrote:

You can also do it in a php.ini file (assuming gzip is enabled) by adding only one line to php.ini:

output_handler = ob_gzhandler;

That’s it.

Also, compressing in a PHP file, the:

ob_end_flush();

line is not necessary for it to function properly. PHP will flush it automatically. To simplify, all you need is:

ob_start(‘ob_gzhandler’);

At the top of a PHP file. You could also prepend a php file to other php files using htaccess. But if you could do that, you might as well use the htaccess example given in this post.

# January 10th, 2009 at 3:19am
Paul wrote:

Vielen Dank für die Informationen =)

# July 26th, 2009 at 4:56am
Is Gzip turned on? - x10Hosting Community wrote:

[...] Is Gzip turned on? As far as I know, yes. http://www.jhuskisson.com/articles/a…e-via-htaccess __________________ Regards, Sharky B.A. (Hons) AVATAR (JPG/PNG) | IRC | PM | MY POSTS | MY [...]

# October 14th, 2009 at 8:15am
Matthew wrote:

I had great luck with this! For me, to implement it server wide, I put it in the httpd.conf file on my linux server. Then, rebooted apache and BAM! Every site I host has it. :)

Thanks!

# December 9th, 2009 at 8:21pm
trecords wrote:

Hello,
Very good idea, can i also compress CSS with adding this code:
css_value output_handler ob_gzhandler

Also i use wpmu, do i need to add the header code to all templates?
Thank you very much

# December 10th, 2009 at 4:36pm
Dave Ashworth wrote:

This is great, though I have come across one issue with it.

I added to a client site and everything was fine and noticeably sped up, however, the application within a sub folder displayed ascii “nonsense” – like if you were to open say a SWF file in word or notepad!

Anyone know why this would be and how to overcome it?

# January 13th, 2010 at 11:50am
Mi wrote:

Thanks for the great tip! It worked on one of my ISPs. On the other ISP it didn’t. I will need to ask the service hotline why it doesn’t work there.
Anyway, great article!

# January 21st, 2010 at 2:27pm