Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Is gzip facility not available for shared plans

[sash_007]

Hello friends,

I just want to know is gzip facility not for those using shard hosting plan or some hosts do offer it?

[MikeDVB]

Originally Posted by sash_007

Hello friends,

I just want to know is gzip facility not for those using shard hosting plan or some hosts do offer it?

You can enable it on a cPanel host under "Website Optimization" or if you're with a LiteSpeed host chances are it's enabled by default.

If you're in doubt, ask any provider before you sign up.

[LnxtecH]

Most cpanel hosts should provide the same by default as its very easy to include while apache is compiled using easyapache.

[Jedito]

Apache 2 use mod_deflate instead. Some hosts do not offer because there are some issues of mod_gzip with FF ("The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression" error). Still the save of bandwidth is not that much that should make it a must IMHO.

[MikeDVB]

Originally Posted by Jedito

Apache 2 use mod_deflate instead. Some hosts do not offer because there are some issues of mod_gzip with FF ("The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression" error). Still the save of bandwidth is not that much that should make it a must IMHO.

The error with FF you are mentioning is generally when a page is double-compressed which could be due to compressing it via PHP as well as mod_deflate or several other reasons. This will *never* happen simply due to enabling gzip compression / mod_deflate alone and will always be a result of several factors.

The way mod_deflate works is that the server only sends gzip'd content if the browser requests it so that it doesn't break support for older browsers that do not support gzip compression.

There are no negative side-effects to enabling mod_deflate beyond maybe a little additional CPU time on the server to compress the page but that's generally minuscule compared to the bandwidth/time savings transferring less data.

[Jedito]

The bandwidth/time saving on this time is almost imperceptible, it was useful some years ago when to open a 300 KB page could take 40 seconds, today it doesn't worth it.

About the FF error, I saw it on simply PHP files, without being compressed through PHP or in any other way.

[MikeDVB]

Originally Posted by Jedito

The bandwidth/time saving on this time is almost imperceptible, it was useful some years ago when to open a 300 KB page could take 40 seconds, today it doesn't worth it.

About the FF error, I saw it on simply PHP files, without being compressed through PHP or in any other way.

I guarantee you that if you saved the output of that file in some fashion and ran gunzip on it twice that you'd get the actual content of the page. And no, I'm not talking about the "Friendly Error Message" from FireFox but the actual output from the server that is resulting in the error message.

That message is always the result of double compression due to two different systems or processes compressing the content.

If you get that error you can simply disable one of the forms of compression and the error will go away - it's not a mod_deflate issue in and of itself.

As for it being useless - when you have hundreds of thousands of page views per month a 45%+ savings per page view can be a HUGE amount of bandwidth savings. Maybe it doesn't matter to some, but for me it's worth it.

Just throwing some rough numbers out there - say your page is 250kb including html, css, js, etc... (excluding images and other files gzip won't compress) and you get 45% bandwidth savings from compression:

Uncompressed for 100,000 Page Views: 25,000,000 KB Used
Compressed for 100,000 Page Views: 13,750,000 KB Used

For a real-world example:
http://www.whatsmyip.org/http_compre...5ndGFsay5jb20v

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ is gzipped
Original Size: 111.5 KB
Gzipped Size: 20.36 KB
Data Savings: 81.74%

WHT's front page over 100,000 page views would save a whopping 9,114,000 KB (8900.390625 MB) with GZIP compression on as apposed to it being off. Now this may not be a "lot" to you - for me that's 81.74% bandwidth saved that I can use for other things like images, etc...

[vivalasvegas]

I believe GZIP improves page loading time even with today's broadband speeds. I am actually going to move away from a shared plan because they do not support GZIP. I suggest you specifically inquire about this.

[MikeDVB]

Originally Posted by vivalasvegas

I believe GZIP improves page loading time even with today's broadband speeds. I am actually going to move away from a shared plan because they do not support GZIP. I suggest you specifically inquire about this.

It's not that shared hosting doesn't support gzip, it's that your current provider doesn't support it.

[vivalasvegas]

It's not that shared hosting doesn't support gzip, it's that your current provider doesn't support it

Mike,
This is what I said/meant.

By the way, a suggestion for the OP: Steadfast.net offers quality shared hosting with GZIP enabled.