How do I enable compression for Nginx?

Question

How do I enable compression for Nginx?

Answer

gzip is not enabled by default in the Nginx configuration. To enable it, modify the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file directly and add this line:

gzip on;

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, see this page):

gzip_types text/plain application/xml;

The overall configuration of gzip compression might look like this:

    gzip on;
    gzip_types      text/plain text/css text/javascript text/xml image/x-icon image/svg+xml application/rss+xml application/javascript application/x-javascript application/xml application/xhtml+xml application/x-font application/x-font-truetype application/x-font-ttf application/x-font-otf application/x-font-opentype application/vnd.ms-fontobject font/ttf font/otf font/opentype;
    gzip_proxied    no-cache no-store private expired auth;
    gzip_min_length 1000;

Once this is completed, restart the services.

/scripts/restartsrv_nginx
/scripts/restartsrv_httpd
/scripts/restartsrv_apache_php_fpm

Note: Your configuration requirements may differ, and the above is a general example. For additional information, review the official Nginx documentation.