How to Enable Gzip or Brotli Compression in WordPress

Enabling compression on your WordPress site can reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files by 70-90%, significantly improving page load times.

Method 1: Apache (.htaccess) — Gzip

Add this to your .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/json
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/atom+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/woff
</IfModule>

Method 2: Nginx — Gzip

gzip on;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_types text/plain text/css text/xml application/json application/javascript application/xml+rss application/atom+xml image/svg+xml font/ttf font/otf;

Method 3: Nginx — Brotli

If your Nginx is compiled with the Brotli module:

brotli on;
brotli_comp_level 6;
brotli_types text/plain text/css text/xml application/json application/javascript application/xml+rss image/svg+xml font/ttf font/otf;

Check Your Hosting Provider

Many managed WordPress hosting providers enable compression by default. Before making changes, check with your host. Providers like Cloudflare also offer one-click Brotli compression through their CDN.

Verify with InspectWP

After enabling compression, run a new InspectWP scan. The performance section should show the Content-Encoding as gzip or br (Brotli) instead of empty.