How to Enable GZIP Compression in WordPress
Do you want to enable gzip compression wordpress? By compressing data and sending it to users’ browsers considerably faster, GZIP compression speeds up your website.
A quicker website provides a better user experience and increases sales and conversions for your company.
We’ll teach you how to effortlessly enable GZIP compression in WordPress in this article.
What is GZIP Compression, and how does it work?
GZIP compression is a method of compressing data files before sending them to browsers. This speeds up your website by reducing file download times.
When the compressed data is received, all current browsers immediately unzip and display the compressed files. GZIP compression has no effect on the appearance or functionality of your website.
It just speeds up the loading of your website.
All popular online browsers, server software, and the best WordPress hosting companies all support GZIP.
What is GZIP compression and how does it work?
Gzip compression uses algorithms that work on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other website files. When a user requests a page from your website, the algorithm compresses the response and sends it back to the user.
The compression can lower file sizes by up to 70% depending on the data size.
Most website speed test tools, such as Google Pagespeed Insights, strongly advise activating gzip compression. If gzip compression is not enabled on your website, these tools will issue a warning.
Gzip compression does not compress photos or videos by default. You’ll need to optimize photos for the web on your WordPress site to achieve this.
Why Should GZIP Compression Be Enabled in WordPress?
Raw data takes longer to download, slowing down your page load time. If multiple visitors visit your WordPress site at the same time, it will slow down even more.
GZIP compression allows you to transport data more quickly, improve page load times, and minimize the burden on your website hosting server. It is a necessary step in increasing the speed and performance of your website.
GZIP may appear to be an extremely sophisticated and difficult acronym. However, there are numerous WordPress plugins that make adding GZIP compression to your WordPress website extremely simple.
Your WordPress hosting company may already have GZIP enabled in some circumstances.
GZIP compression is enabled by default on all new WordPress sites hosted by Bluehost, an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.
Simply go to this GZIP tester and enter your site’s URL to see if GZIP is enabled on your site. A ‘GZIP Is Enabled’ notice will appear if GZIP is enabled on your site.
Enabling GZIP Compression with WPRocket
WP Rocket is the greatest WordPress caching plugin. It’s really simple to use and activates all of the important speed optimization features right away, including GZIP compression.
The WP Rocket plugin must first be installed and activated. See our step-by-step guide on installing a WordPress plugin for more information.
Your license key should be enabled automatically after activation. You may check this in your WordPress admin by going to Settings » WP Rocket.
WP Rocket should now be active and working, according to the notification.
If you’re utilizing an Apache server, WP Rocket will enable GZIP compression for you automatically. Apache is used by the majority of WordPress web hosting companies. There are no more steps that need to be taken.
Check out our guide to installing and setup WP Rocket for a complete list of features.
Using WP Super Cache to enable GZIP compression
WP Super Cache is a free caching plugin for WordPress. It’s also an excellent technique to make your WordPress site GZIP-compressible.
The WP Super Cache plugin must first be installed and activated. See our step-by-step guide on installing a WordPress plugin for more information.
Go to Settings > WP Super Cache page » Advanced in your WordPress dashboard after activation. Simply click the box that says “Compress pages so they’re served faster to visitors.”
Then, to save your changes, scroll down the page and click the ‘Update Status’ option. On your WordPress website, WP Super Cache will now activate gZip compression.
Using W3 Total Cache to enable GZIP compression
Another excellent WordPress caching plugin is W3 Total Cache. It isn’t nearly as user-friendly as WP Rocket, but it does come with a free version. This makes it a smart choice if the price of building a WordPress site are getting out of hand.
The W3 Total Cache plugin must first be installed and activated. See our step-by-step guide on installing a WordPress plugin for more information.
GZIP compression will be activated on your website automatically after activation. Go to the Performance » General Settings tab in your WordPress dashboard to check or update this.
Scroll down this page to Browser Cache and double-check that the Enable box is checked:
If you make any changes, remember to click the ‘Save all changes’ option.
Verifying GZIP Enablement on Your Website
You may notice that your website pages load faster after enabling GZIP. If you want to make sure that GZIP is running, you can use a GZIP checker tool.
We hope that this post has shown you how to use GZIP compression in WordPress.
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