How to enable mod_deflate on Apache 2.4?

Compressing data like html, js, css before transmitting them to the visitors can speed up your sites and save you bandwidth. Recently I have updated Apache on one server from version 2.2 to 2.4 but my mod_deflate rules won’t work any more (because of changes in the new version of Apache).

Here are my old mod_deflate rules I used on Apache 2.2:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

<IfModule filter_module>
FilterDeclare COMPRESS
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/html
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/css
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/plain
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/x-component
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/javascript
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/json
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xhtml+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/rss+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/atom+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/vnd.ms-fontobject
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $image/svg+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/x-font-ttf
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $font/opentype
FilterChain COMPRESS
FilterProtocol COMPRESS DEFLATE change=yes;byteranges=no
</IfModule>

<IfModule !mod_filter.c>
# Legacy versions of Apache
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css application/json
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml application/xml text/x-component
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf font/opentype
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

And here’s my new Apache 2.4 code that enables mod_deflate compression:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c> 
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE 
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpg|png|ico|zip|gz|mp4|flv)$ no-gzip 
</IfModule>

Nice and easy! You can add other extensions you do not want to compress to the list above and that should be it!

cPanel/WHM users should login to WHM then go to Service Configuration -> Apache Configuration -> Include Editor then locate Pre VirtualHost Include on the page and select All Versions from the list (or current version of the Apache in my case 2.4.10).

apache-2.4-mod-deflate1

Then simply copy paste the code above into the box, save and restart the Apache service.

apache-2.4-mod-deflate2

Note: The process is same for Apache 2.2 just use the appropriate code from above.

MP4 streaming using Apache + WHM/cPanel
How to solve wp-cron.php high CPU usage?

Comments

  1. I tried adding the code to .htaccess but it didn’t work but when I added the same to Apache Configuration Globally then it worked.

    What can be the reason?

    • That’s odd. Have you verified that mod_deflate is actually working once it’s placed in Apache Configuration Globally?

  2. Thanks for your help. I was really so easy as you said.

  3. Finally a correct answer.
    It was really difficult to migrate from Apache 2.2 to Apache 2.4

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published / Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.