How to Enable NGINX Gzip Compression

Gzip compression is a great way to improve the performance of your web site. Gzip compresses files that are sent from your web server to browsers. This makes the files download faster and your web site load faster.

Nginx is a popular web server software. You can follow these simple steps to enable Gzip compression in Nginx:

Table of Contents

1. Edit the Nginx Configuration File

The Nginx configuration file defines how your web server will work. To find this file, refer to your web server’s installation documentation.

Once you have found the Nginx configuration file, open it with the following command:

nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

2. Enable Gzip Compression

To enable Gzip compression, add the following line to your configuration file:

gzip on;

This will tell Nginx to compress all eligible files.

3. Define Eligible Files for Compression

By default, Nginx compresses the following file types:

HTML
CSS
JavaScript
Text

If you do not want to compress these file types, add the following line to your configuration file:

gzip_disable "msie6";

This will disable Gzip compression for users using the MSIE 6 browser.

4. Set the Compression Level

You can set the Gzip compression level by adding the following line to your configuration file:

gzip_comp_level 6;

The compression level can be between 1 and 9. 1 is the lowest compression level, and 9 is the highest compression level.

5. Save the Changes and Restart the Server

Save the changes and restart your web server.

Example

The following example shows how to enable Gzip compression in the Nginx configuration file:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;

    gzip on;
    gzip_disable "msie6";
    gzip_comp_level 6;

    location / {
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
        index index.html index.htm;
    }

    location /images/ {
        gzip_static on;
    }
}

In this example, all eligible files are compressed, and Gzip compression is disabled for users using the MSIE 6 browser. Additionally, the compression level is set to 6.

Gzip compression is a great way to improve the performance of your web sites. To enable Gzip compression in Nginx, you can follow this guide.