Enable GZIP compression in NGINX or Apache to reduce page load times and bandwidth.

Enable GZIP in NGINX

Edit the main NGINX config or your server block:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Add or uncomment in the http block:

http {
    gzip on;
    gzip_vary on;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_comp_level 6;
    gzip_min_length 256;
    gzip_types
        text/plain
        text/css
        text/javascript
        application/javascript
        application/json
        application/xml
        image/svg+xml
        font/woff
        font/woff2;
}

sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

Enable GZIP in Apache

sudo a2enmod deflate
sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/deflate.conf

    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript application/json
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml font/woff font/woff2

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Verify Compression

# Check if gzip is enabled for a URL
curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I https://example.com | grep -i content-encoding

# Expected output:
# content-encoding: gzip

Bonus: Enable Brotli (NGINX)

Brotli achieves better compression ratios than GZIP for text files.

sudo apt install -y libnginx-mod-http-brotli-static libnginx-mod-http-brotli-filter

# Add to nginx.conf http block:
brotli on;
brotli_comp_level 6;
brotli_types text/plain text/css application/javascript application/json image/svg+xml;