UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Chit Chat Speed up web pages to the end user

Thoughts?

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/articles/howto/mod_gzip_1.html

If you have a dedicated box, and can figure out how to get mod_gzip to do its thing with .cgi output, then by all means, compile that baby in! It's a Good Thing.

i had seen this mentioned before but i never realized it could get compression this good:
hehe time to beg the host...

It's a great module! Should be on every server.

q

doesn't appear to run on win2k/IIS, just apache...:(

WElp, I down loaded the program and edited the httpd.conf file with the load line and their configuration. Now waiting back on an e-mail as I am a bit lost on the rest of their instructions not to mention they run a UBB system so I think they should ahve the "optimum" setup. Will report back for everyone ocne I get more info

Of course, we have the ISAPI compression module anyway which is faster

Just a thought

This will also save you bandwidth costs and decrease your monthly expenses.

We implemented this in our community section last month and experienced a 50% decrease in bandwidth usage along with a 10% increase in traffic.

Of course your mileage may vary depending on graphics (which aren't compressed) and other files (i.e. zip). Over all though you should see a noticeable drop in bandwidth usage.

i see
oh, r u vBull's Wayne Luke? welcome

Actually I am. I do some support work for them. However that isn't why I came here and I will most likely never mention the software here.

I am more of SitePoint's Wayne Luke and charged with building the community on that site. In doing so, I visit a lot of different communities and work to build the best one within my abilities. My goals work with the goals of this site here. We are all in the business of building Web based communities. The software used underneath those communities doesn't really matter, it is the software in your head that will determine whether you succeed or not.

1QuickSI let me give you a few notes on my own experiences with mod_gzip ( from http://www.remotecommunications.com/apache/mod_gzip/)

In testing on a RH6.2 server (my own kernel) Apache 1.3.17/mod_gzip/mod_perl 1.25/mod_php/mod_ssl:

HTML squished 80 to 85%
.jpg is already compressed. Waste of recources enabling for .jpg
.gif will squish but in Netscape it made a dead image. Ie worked fine.

.cgi stuff works well also, except the UBB. The pages load quick and fast but I had a problem with any pages involving a refresh. In other words after you post you get the refresh screen that should then bring you back to your post. It didn't refresh with mod_gzip enabled for .cgi pages. Don't know why.

.php is iffy in my book. I tried with and without dechunking. Some pages worked, some gave me a doc contains no data error.

I'll be honest I did not have the time to fool around with it and figure out why the above behaviours were displayed. I also did not have the time to config around certain browsers. I also was using the version previous to the current version when I was testing. Maybe some of it is fixed now in this newer release.

That said I have been running the latest version, enabled for the html pages only, on Infopop.com for a week with no complaints or comments at all. Too soon to know accurately if it made any real impact on bandwidth.

edit - have not tried mod_gzip yet with SSL enabled.

[ June 12, 2001 09:33 PM: Message edited by: Ultimate navaho ]

wluke & Ultimate navaho, I would like to compare some of the settings.

I have the LoadModule placed at the very end of the list. Even after the bracketed commands () then I have the AddModule command line also at the end of that section followed by;

# [ mod_gzip configuration ]
mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_minimum_file_size 300
mod_gzip_maximum_file_size 0
mod_gzip_maximum_inmem_size 100000
mod_gzip_keep_workfiles No
mod_gzip_temp_dir /tmp
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file .htm$
mod_gzip_item_include file .html$
mod_gzip_item_include file .php$
mod_gzip_item_include file .pl$
mod_gzip_item_include file .cgi$
mod_gzip_item_include mime text/.*

I am also on the mod_gzip listserver and have received some great help. Still trying to figure out what is optimum for a UBB system as ever little bit helps

Things visably improved alot. I still need to figure out how to setup the logging feature so I can see what compression I am getting. Also did you get an EAPI warning when you restart httpd? I was told it is a bogus error but would like to know if others have gotten it as well.

My Load Module
LoadModule gzip_module libexec/mod_gzip.so (second from last)


My AddModule:
AddModule mod_gzip.c (it is also second from last)

The config I tacked onto the bottom of httpd.conf

################# Mod_GZIP ##################
# http://www.remotecommunications.com/apache/mod_gzip/
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t %r %>s %b mod_gzip: %{mod_gzip_compression_ratio}npct." common_with_mod_gzip_info1
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t %r %>s %b mod_gzip: %{mod_gzip_result}n In:%{mod_gzip_input_size}n Out:%{mod_gzip_output_size}n:%{mod_gzip_compression_ratio}npct." common_with_mod_gzip_info2
CustomLog /var/log/httpd/gzip.log common_with_mod_gzip_info2
mod_gzip_on yes
mod_gzip_dechunk yes
mod_gzip_minimum_file_size 200
mod_gzip_maximum_file_size 0
mod_gzip_maximum_inmem_size 100000
mod_gzip_keep_workfiles No
mod_gzip_temp_dir /tmp
mod_gzip_item_include file .html$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^httpd/unix-directory$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^server-status$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^server-info$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file .cgi$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file .pl$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file .php$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file .css$
mod_gzip_item_exclude file .js$
################# Mod_GZIP ##################

I removed the dechunk options and have php, .pl, and .cgi disabled for the reasons stated in my above post.

The handler for server info can come out, I have that disabled further up in the conf file.

My log is really too verbose as you can see and should be trimmed back more but I haven't taken the time to mess with it.

This is from my own server in the configuration I mentioned above as well, using a version of mod_gzip a bit older then the most current.

I really do need to work on the whole package some more but I want to rewrite my httpd.conf as a perl script when I do it and don't have the time for it now.

That made me laugh SO much.

Just a thought

It is my understanding that the load order of modules of the httpd.conf file is extremely important. I wonder if this has any bearing on the way this particular module works or the issue you had with UBB CGI?

IIS 5.0 has already GZIP compression
http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/iis/httpcomp.asp

There is no need to compress PHP pages with mod_gzip. Just compile PHP 4.0.5 with the option --zlib and add output_handler = ob_gzhandler into your php.ini or on top of every PHP page.

Cool! Thanks Philipp, next recompile I'll do that. Probably will not be long the way I go.

1QuickSi, yes it does make a difference as far as I know. That is where it ended up when I compiled the whole package, I did not add it there myself. I don't really know what order they should be loaded in to be honest.

thanks for the link phillipp.. it seems that it might not work well with our site, we'd really need to set cgi as one of the compressed file types for it to do us any good (since we ssi so many things) and that might just kill the processor with the main forums being all cgi...:)