Speeding up site using gzip and far-future expiration dates.

Question

I recently deployed a site http://boardlite.com . One of the tester websites http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php suggests that gzip is not enabled for my site. YSlow gives an A grade for Gzip but does not mention that gzip is on.

How do I make sure the site properly implements Gzip. I am also going to enable far-future expiry dates for static media. I would like to know if there are any best practices for setting the expiry date.

Static media on the site is served by nginx server while the site itself runs on top of apache, just in case if this information is required.

Answer 1

It looks like Gzip is enabled on your server. You can tell by checking the HTTP response headers for 'Content-Encoding: gzip'.

I can't think of any "best practices" for future expiry dates - other than to make sure they're not in the past ;)

There are many other ways you can optimize your web site. Spriting your CSS background images and using a content delivery network for your static content are a few.

Andrew

Answer 2

I'd advise against going too far into the future or you'll make site upgrades a nightmare. I believe a week should be enough since after that you'll still only be serving 302 responses not the whole image.