{"id":8580,"date":"2019-09-11T11:02:51","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T11:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpvivid.com\/?p=8580"},"modified":"2020-02-02T05:09:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-02T05:09:28","slug":"enable-gzip-compression-in-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpvivid.com\/enable-gzip-compression-in-wordpress.html","title":{"rendered":"How to Enable GZIP Compression in WordPress to Improve Website Loading Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

As website visitors, we obsessed with fast loading websites<\/a>. As a website owner, you must build a website<\/a> that loads fast. One way you can do that is by compressing the files, and that is why I will show you how to enable GZIP compression in WordPress<\/a>, the easy way.<\/p>\n

GZIP is a file compression and decompression utility, with which you can reduce the size of website files a browser has to download.<\/p>\n

When a visitor makes is looking for information on your website<\/a>, the browser sends a request to the server hosting<\/a> of the website, the server retrieves the data requested, compresses it and sends it back to the browser which then decompresses it. By doing this, a single and smaller file is sent to the browser, tremendously improving on the load time.<\/p>\n

It is not only your website visitors who are interested in sites that load fast. Search engines like Google place much weight on page speeds in their search ranking criteria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Page speeds are so important to Google that they even have a tool in the same name to help website owners learn what affects the speeds of the websites<\/a>, Google PageSpeed Insights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I hope this article will help you improve the speed of your website, but first, you need to know –<\/p>\n

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How to check if GZIP is enabled on a WordPress website?<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A free tool I love to use in any website performance optimization<\/a> job is GTMetrix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Compression is one of the several benchmarks they test on a webpage.<\/p>\n

You can head to https:\/\/gtmetrix.com\/<\/a>\u00a0and test your website. The test results will tell you if you need or don\u2019t need to enable GZIP compression.<\/p>\n

\"Gtmetrix\"<\/p>\n

If you want to be on top of the SERPs, if you wish to your website to load fast, then one thing you can do now is enable GZIP compression in WordPress.<\/p>\n

Here is the easy way to go about it.<\/p>\n

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How to Enable GZIP compression in WordPress?<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Enable GZIP compression in WordPress using a plugin<\/strong><\/h4>\n

GZIP is a software utility that runs on a server.<\/p>\n

Luckily, most web servers come with GZIP installed, but, for a website to make use of it, one needs to enable compression for her website manually.<\/p>\n

Usually, this requires adding some code your configuration files<\/a> \u2013 for instance on Apache servers you need to modify the .htaccess file<\/a>. \u00a0The easy way, though, is using a plugin.<\/p>\n

Since we are talking of WordPress here, you are spoiled for choice for what plugin to use<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the plugins I have worked with that you can explore.<\/p>\n