Gzip Compression

[bunkbedking]

Hi



with Googles new obsession with page loading speed, they are recommending to compressing resources with gzip to reduce their transfer size.



They recommend:

Compressing https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/box.js could save ~24.7kB.

Compressing http://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/boxec22enc.js could save ~4.2kB.

I believe you are using an apache server - can you please set up server side gzip compression?



Benefit to your customers is improved page rank with google



Thanks



Denis

[ellen]

Thanks for the suggestion, Denis.



We looked into this in the past, and for engineering reasons decided not to enable it at that time.



HOWEVER looking at the system now, I think those reasons are no longer valid.



I'll be setting this up and doing some tests; barring anything unexpected, we should be able to enable this in the short term. We'll keep you posted.

[bunkbedking]

Thanks!!!!

[epatio]

Hi



has this been implemented?



Regards



Denis

[E-junkie_Guru]

I think we have implemented this now, yes.

[epatio]

Hi



I just checked and page speed is showing

Compressing https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/box.js could save ~24.7kB.

Compressing http://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/boxec22enc.js could save ~4.2kB.

so I believe it is not operational?

[ellen]

Denis,



This has been in production for approximately three weeks now[1]. Any js or css, and most html, coming from any of our web servers should be served with gzip compression if the browser indicates it supports that.



The exception is a few forms which generate an inline download; I discovered that due to a long-standing bug, Internet Explorer didn't work with content compression enabled on those pages, so I went back and disabled compression for just those specific pages. Those forms are all used by sellers, and mostly all generate compressed zip file downloads anyway, so no big loss there.



Unfortunately, I just discovered that in applying the configuration change to accomodate IE's bugs, I slightly messed up on one web server, resulting in content compression not being activated at all on it; I think that's the one that you happened to be hitting when running the speed test.



Anyway, it's fixed now, and should really be enabled site wide again. Thanks for pointing it out!



[1] When I make a low-level change like this, I prefer not to advertise it; too many people see such a change notice and try to link it to whatever problem they're having without really understanding what's going on. I hope you'll pardon my curmudgeonly ways ;-D

[stacyblackman]

I recently got the following message in a GTmetrix report for stacyblackman.com:

Compressing https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/box.js could save 66.8KiB (78% reduction).

I tested with Check gzip compression and got the same result:

Check GZIP compression

GZIP is not enabled

78.3%
Could be saved by compressing this page with GZIP.

Uncompressed size87,424 bytes
Compressed size18,981 bytes

Is there something else I should be doing?

Thanks!

[E-junkie_Guru]

That's not something our clientele would have any control over; it would have to be done from our end. That said, 66.8k is a fairly trivial savings, on the order of milliseconds, but I'll refer your suggestion to Dev anyway.

[stacyblackman]

seems like it was fixed in 2010, so should also work now.
maybe with the redesign it wasn't re-enabled?

And it is important for google rankings as they're taking page speed load into consideration as already mentioned in the first post in this thread.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Our Devs have enabled gzip compression for all requests to our server as of last night.