WordPress is the finest Content Management System available for developing dynamic websites. Having an attractive and robust digital solution has become essential for any business to survive the increasing competition. Hence, consumers today are loaded with various choices (websites/web applications) for a similar solution. To increase and maintain user activity on your website, it needs to offer an incredible speed to consumers. It is advisable to enable GZIP compression to achieve the same.
Enabling GZIP compression can help you make your website faster. It does that by compressing the data and delivering it to the user's browser much quicker. A fast website can increase user activity and improve the sales of the offered products.
As we can see, GZIP compression is excellent for increasing the scalability of a website; let us discuss the three simple steps of doing so.
Enable GZIP Compression: All You Need to Know
It is a technology that helps you to compress the data files before they are being sent to the user's browser. It reduces the download time for the files, and hence the website becomes faster.
On receiving the zipped files, the modern browsers automatically unzip them and display them. GZIP compression doesn't change the way the website looks or functions. It just makes the website load faster. It is further supported by all the popular web browsers, server software, and efficient WordPress hosting companies. Hire WordPress developers for making your complex wordpress development tasks easier.
How Does It work?
Compression algorithms are used by GZIP compression that works on website files like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and more. The set algorithm sends the output back in a compressed format when a user requests a page from your website.
The GZIP compression can reduce file sizes by up to 70%, depending upon the data size.
It is why primary website speed testing tools like Google Pagespeed Insights recommend enabling gzip compression very likely. These tools also show a warning if gzip compression is not enabled on your website.
It is to be noted that by default, Gzip compression does not compress videos or images. To do that, you will need to optimize images for the web on your WordPress site.
Why Is GZIP Compression Needed In WordPress?
The simple raw data takes longer to download; this affects the page load speed. The page download speed can further jeopardize the user interactivity on your website. Also, if several users arrive at your website at the same time, its speed slows down.
Using GZIP compression, you can effectively transfer data, speed up the page load time, and reduce the website hosting load. It is an essential step in improving the speed and performance of your website.
You might think that GZIP is very technical and complicated. However, many GZIP compression WordPress plugins make it easy to add compression to your website. While for some websites, it may even have GZIP already enabled by the WordPress hosting company.
Bluehost is a recommended WordPress hosting provider that automatically enables GZIP compression on all new WordPress sites.
Moreover, to test if GZIP is already enabled on your site, simply go to the GZIP tester and enter the website URL. If GZIP is working on the site, one can see a 'GZIP Is Enabled' message.
How To Enable GZIP Compression In WordPress?
For adding GZIP compression by yourself, we are helping you by providing three different ways.
WPRocket: An Amazing Plugin for Enabling GZIP Compression In WordPress
WPRocket is a fantastic caching plugin for WordPress. It is effortless to use and enables all the essential speed optimization features, including GZIP compression. For this, you need to first install and activate the WPRocket plugin.
On activation, the license key automatically activates for you. It can be checked in this manner, Settings » WP Rocket page in your WordPress admin. Further, you can see a message that WP Rocket is working and active.
This plugin automatically enables GZIP compression in the Apache server. This server is used by all the major WordPress web hosting providers. One doesn't need to follow any additional steps.
WP Super Cache: Enabling GZIP Compression
WP Super Cache is a free WordPress caching plugin. It is also one of the fabulous ways of enabling GZIP compression on a WordPress site.
For doing so, one needs to first install and activate the WP Super Cache plugin.
Once activated, one can go to the Settings » WP Super Cache page » Advanced in the WordPress dashboard. Then, simply check the 'Compress pages, so they're served more quickly to the visitors' box.
Lastly, one needs to scroll down the page and click the 'Update Status' button to save the done changes. Finally, WP Super Cache will enable GZIP compression on the WordPress website.
W3 Total Cache for Enabling GZIP Compression
W3 Total Cache is another amazing caching plugin of WordPress. It's not that beginner-friendly as compared to WP Rocket, but a free version is available. It makes it a viable option if the creation cost for the WordPress website is adding up.
For this, you need to first install and activate the W3 Total Cache plugin.
On its activation, GZIP compression gets automatically enabled on your website. It can be checked or changed by going to the Performance » General Settings page in your WordPress dashboard.
Scroll down the page to Browser Cache and make sure that there is a check in the Enable box. Click the save all button if you make any changes.
Conclusion
After enabling the GZIP compressor, you may notice that the website is running faster. For ensuring the same, you can use the GZIP checking tool. WordPress undoubtedly is a fantastic platform for website development. It enables developers to develop dynamic and attractive websites for business solutions. You can hire WordPress Developers to get a customized web solution.
With every industry adopting a digital medium, the competition for startups is increasing. Hence it is required to provide users with a fast and interactive website to increase their engagement. For doing so, Wordpress GZIP is the right solution.
Through GZIP compression, you can make a WordPress site faster by compressing the data files. These files are compressed before reaching a user's server. Any server can read these compressed files and unzip them before presenting them to the users. The compression increases the scalability, speed, and performance of any website.
By doing so, you can manage a vast number of users efficiently on a website. In some websites, GZIP is already enabled by WordPress web hosting companies. As mentioned above, Bluehost is a recommended WordPress hosting provider that automatically enables GZIP compression on all new WordPress sites.
Moreover, to test if GZIP is enabled already on your site, simply go to the GZIP tester and enter the website URL. If GZIP is working on the site, one can see a 'GZIP Is Enabled' message. For doing it manually, you can do it with 3 WordPress plugins; WPRocket, WP Super Cache, and WP Total Cache. The same has been elaborated above in detail. You can give it a read and accordingly try to enable GZIP compression by yourself. Accordingly you can opt to hire web app development services from Hestabit for making your development related tasks easier.
