Better Websites #7 - HTTP Compression

(A continuing series)

Want to make your web site load 2, 3, 4 times faster? Since 57% of US home users still have just dial-up access, such a speed increase would be a huge competitive advantage for your web site. A number of studies have shown slow load times annoy the hell out of users, and that costs you sales.

mod_gzip can help. Even better, it can cut your bandwidth bill dramatically. The magic mod_gzip does is compress your content (static or dynamic), which the web browser on the other end can uncompress. For example, the HTML on the vardaman.org home page is 8,635 bytes. With mod_gzip, only 3,311 bytes needs to be downloaded. It requires 62% less bandwidth, and loads 2.6 times faster. If you run a commercial site and your monthly bandwidth bill is $1,000, you can cut that cost in half.

For my purposes I prefer to compile mod_gzip statically into the Apache binary. If you would like a copy of my Apache configure scripts or config files, let me know.

For more reading:

mod_gzip
HTTP Compression Speeds up the Web
WebCompression.Org
Port80 Surveys HTTP Compression on the Top 1000 Corporations' Web Sites (includes a test and calculator for your site)
Software Review: mod_gzip trims bandwidth utilization by 77%