How to configure Nginx Gzip compression

Enabling Gzip compression in Nginx is very easy, and allow us to save bandwidth transfer and also almost duplicate/triplicate our page speed. First step is edit nginx.conf file, that could be located somewhere /etc/nginx/nginx.conf or /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf, in most distributions.

Once there, you just need to add this code to the http section, like this:

http {.........# enable gzip compressiongzip on;gzip_min_length  1100;gzip_buffers  4 32k;gzip_types    text/plain application/x-javascript text/xml text/css;gzip_vary on;# end gzip configuration.........}

Once you finish editing the file, just restart nginx:

/etc/init.d/nginx restart

How to test Gzip compression is working in Nginx?

[my@lan ~]$ curl --header "Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch" -I http://www.nginxtips.comHTTP/1.1 200 OKServer: nginxDate: Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:41:38 GMTContent-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8Connection: keep-aliveVary: Accept-EncodingX-Pingback: http://www.nginxtips.com/xmlrpc.phpContent-Encoding: gzip

If you see “Content-Encoding: gzip”, that means your page was served using Nginx Gzip Module.