New to the community? Start here

GZip compression not working

Hi,

Gzip is not working properly. I contacted my server and they confirmed that the “deflate” module enabled. It was working just fine and then suddenly stopped, really lowering my speed performance score. Can it be checked for me?

Wed, 3 Jan 2018 12:02:19
  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Rebecca,

    Hope you’re doing well.

    Did you check your .htaccess file, are GZIP rules still there?

    If yes, then it’s strange that it stoped working all of a sudden, this would usually mean that your server had some changes regarding this.

    Can you check with them if they still allow GZIP compression to be defined via .htaccess rules?

    Could you also grant support access to your site so we can have a closer look at this?

    To enable support access you can follow this guide here:

    https://wpmudev.com/docs/getting-started/getting-support/#chapter-5

    Best regards,

    Predrag

  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Rebecca,

    I hope you’re well today!

    I checked the site and your site is actually compressed. This external check detects it: https://checkgzipcompression.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thephillydog.com%2F but more importantly – resources of JS, HTML and CSS type do carry over all the compression headers as expected (checked with browser).

    The problem here seems to be that the server configuration is a bit different than it “seems to be”. The WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin (and Hummingbird) detects it “from the inside” as Apache. That is correct because the site itself is powered/served by Apache.

    However, when checked from the outside, the webserver software that responds is NGINX. It’s a different softwared and that kind of result usually means that while the site itself is served by Apache, NGINX is “in front” of it. It can either be because there’s some sort of CDN (content delivery network) implemented by you or even by the host or because the host went for such configuration (it’s getting more and more popular).

    The bottom line here is that it seems to be a “false alarm” and the compression is working but Hummingibird (which checks is “from inside”:wink: just doesn’t detect it properly due to the setup. My point is, I wouldn’t actually worry about it as the site is compressed. Our developers are always working on improvements so such kind of “false alarm” is less and less common.

    Best regards,

    Adam