Always Compress Text Content

Web browsers must download website data before they can begin to show the web pages to website visitors. One of the best ways to make web browsers download data faster is to compress text content (e.g. HTML, CSS, JavaScript) when possible before it is sent to visitors’ web browsers. Compression reduces the size of text content by removing repeated or duplicated information that can be later added back to the data by decompression. Web browsers can then decompress the information to restore it to its original state. Compression and decompression can be CPU-intensive as the CPU is used to process the text content before sending and after receiving it; however, in most cases, the data is small enough to be compressed or decompressed nearly instantly.

WordPress websites can easily enable compression for text content by using a 3rd-party caching plugin. Compression for text content can also be enabled at the web server (e.g. Apache, NGINX, etc.) level by adjusting the configuration of the web server to compress web server responses before they are sent to visitors’ web browsers.