When I get time, I go through the logs and check out how the servers are doing.<\/p>\n
One thing that I haven’t really done recently is to optimize the way things are configured.
\nThe typical solution in most scenario’s is to throw faster hardware at things (something we do when necessary!), but sometimes a few minutes configuration can help speed things up tremendously.<\/p>\n
Below are some tips for optimizing apache a little.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’m going to assume you’re running apache2.\u00a0 If not, why not?<\/p>\n
First thing to do is to enable 2 modules.\u00a0 Mod_Deflate and Mod_Expires<\/p>\n
a2enmod deflate<\/p>\n
a2enmod expires<\/p>\n
Mod_Deflate is a nice Apache module that allows us to gzip files\u00a0 when we send them to the browser.\u00a0 This helps load times quite nicely – as network traffic is reduced.<\/p>\n
In our systems Apache is over in \/etc\/apache2\/
\nThe module configuration is done in mods-enabled<\/p>\n
First up, we’ll configure Mod_Deflate.<\/p>\n
pico \/etc\/apache2\/mods-enabled\/deflate.conf<\/p>\n
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text\/plain
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text\/html
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text\/xml
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text\/css
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text\/javascript
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application\/xml
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application\/xhtml+xml
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application\/rss+xml
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application\/javascript
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application\/x-javascript
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application\/x-httpd-php
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application\/x-httpd-fastphp
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application\/x-httpd-eruby
\nAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image\/svg+xml<\/p>\n
DeflateCompressionLevel 9<\/p>\n
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla\/4 gzip-only-text\/html
\nBrowserMatch ^Mozilla\/4\\.0[678] no-gzip
\nBrowserMatch bMSIEs(7|8) !no-gzip !gzip-only-text\/html<\/p>\n
SetEnvIf User-Agent “.*MSIE.*” nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0<\/p>\n
<\/IfModule><\/p>\n
I’ll go over what we’ve done below;<\/p>\n
If you examine the file above, you’ll see that the first thing we do, is to check if mod_deflate is loaded with the IfModule directive.<\/p>\n
We then setup compression for various file types –<\/p>\n
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE\u00a0 ….<\/strong><\/p>\n While we can compress everything, and just exclude certain files, its usually safer to specify whats compressed.<\/p>\n We then set compression to maximum – computers these days have ample excess CPU, so its not really a concern anymore.<\/p>\n DeflateCompressionLevel 9<\/strong><\/p>\n The next lines are to specify exceptions to the compression rules.\u00a0 Ancient versions of Netscape don’t work so well with compression, so we disable it.\u00a0 Internet Explorer also has a few issues also, so we setup an appropriate rule.<\/p>\n BrowserMatch ^Mozilla\/4 gzip-only-text\/html The last line is to force compatibility with older IE versions.\u00a0 IE is a bit buggy, as we’ve noted.<\/p>\n BrowserMatch bMSIEs(7|8) !no-gzip !gzip-only-text\/html<\/strong><\/p>\n We’ll now check to see that we haven’t made any mistakes, and Apache2 runs ok.<\/p>\n apache2ctl configtest<\/p>\n If you see any errors, fix and retest.<\/p>\n Restart apache2<\/p>\n apache2ctl restart<\/p>\n Load up FireFox.\u00a0 You’ll need to have some plugins installed to test. Done?<\/p>\n Ok, now open a page from the site, and click YSlow.<\/p>\n You should see now that the css, js, and php files are compressed with GZip.<\/p>\n Our next step is to setup Mod_Expires<\/p>\n pico \/etc\/apache2\/mods-enabled\/expires.conf<\/p>\n <IfModule mod_expires.c> Essentially, what we’re doing above is turning on Content Expiry.\u00a0 Content Expiry is the time that a browser will cache a file for before it reloads it.\u00a0 For your average site things like images, javascript and css don’t change that much, so we can tell the browser to explicitly cache them.<\/p>\n The number next to the Expiry is the time that the file is valid for in seconds. In our setup above, we’ve set that images and css and javascript files should be kept for 6 hours. I’d suggest using a low, but similar time span to avoid caching issues.\u00a0 This would mostly affect website developers, rather than end users though, as they’re more likely to upload and change files frequently during testing.<\/p>\n Restart apache, and check again in YSlow \/ Firebug to see that the images and CSS are being cached.\u00a0 If they are, congratulations, you’re done.<\/p>\n You should see a nice improvement on site load times, and things should feel snappier to end users. When I get time, I go through the logs and check out how the servers are doing. One thing that I haven’t really done recently is to optimize the way things are configured. The typical solution in most scenario’s is to throw faster hardware at things (something we do when necessary!), but sometimes a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[41,42,43,44],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technical-mumbo-jumbo","tag-apache","tag-mod_deflate","tag-mod_expires","tag-tuning"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computersolutions.cn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBrowserMatch ^Mozilla\/4\\.0[678] no-gzip
\nBrowserMatch bMSIEs(7|8) !no-gzip !gzip-only-text\/html<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nGo get FireBug, and YSlow, install and come back.<\/p>\n
\nExpiresActive On
\nExpiresByType image\/gif A21600
\nExpiresByType image\/jpeg A21600
\nExpiresByType text\/css A21600
\nExpiresByType application\/x-javascript A21600
\n<\/IfModule><\/p>\n
\n(after that point, the browser should reload the file from the server).<\/p>\n
\nA21600 means – after 6hrs (60seconds x 60minutes x 6 = 21600)<\/p>\n
\nIt will also reduce your server load, which is a nice benefit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"