How do I enable compression for Nginx?

Question

How do I enable compression for Nginx? 

Answer

Gzip is not enabled by default within the Nginx configuration. You will need to enable this by modifying the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file directly and adding your configuration:

gzip on;

Within the configuration, by default, NGINX compresses responses only with MIME type text/html. To compress responses with other MIME types, include the gzip_types directive and list the additional types. For additional mime types, please see MIME types 

gzip_types text/plain application/xml;

The overall configuration of gzip compression might look like this.

server {
    gzip on;
    gzip_types      text/plain application/xml;
    gzip_proxied    no-cache no-store private expired auth;
    gzip_min_length 1000;
    ...
}

Please note your configuration requirements may differ and the above is a general example. For additional information, please review the official Nginx documentation.