Enabling Gzip compression in WordPress is one of the simplest adjustments you can make to speed up website load time, and even increase your Google Page Speed score.

What is Gzip Compression?

Gzip compression allows you to save bandwidth resources by compressing website text, script, and images on the web server. After compression, the resources are sent directly to the client browser to be uncompressed. Gzip compression is widely adopted and used on many modern websites.

How to Enable Gzip Compression

Gzip can be enabled manually through editing the websites .htaccess file, or by using a WordPress plugin.

Manually Editing .htaccess

Add the below code to your .htaccess file (be sure not to remove any existing WordPress code):

#Gzip Compression#
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
</IfModule>
#End Gzip Compression#

Enabling Gzip Through a Caching Plugin

You can easily enable Gzip compression through many of the popular caching plugins. Below is an example showing the Advanced ‘compress pages’ setting in WP Super Cache which will enabled Gzip compression site-wide.

Make Sure It’s Working

Once you have enabled Gzip through your preferred method, be sure to check that it is functioning properly. One of the easiest is to utilize the Google Page Speed Insights tool to ensure that compression is enabled for your website content.