WEB HOSTING SUPPORT NETWORK
     
 

Using mod_brotli

Mod_brotli is a module for the Apache Web Server. It uses the brotli compression format to compress data sent from the server to the client over the network. The compression is automatic, and the only requirement is that the browser supports brotli compression. Modern browsers support brotli, and no additional software is required.

  • How is the compression performed?

The browser will announce if the compression method is supported when sending a request to the server for a specific file, such as http://www.example_domain.com/index.html. If Apache is configured with mod_brotli, the content of index.html will be compressed and sent to the browser. The browser, on the other hand, will decompress the file and will display it to the client as a simple HTML file. The web visitor would not be aware of the above operations.

  • How can I use mod_brotli?

To set up mod_brotli, you have to create a .htaccess file (note the dot (".") symbol at the beginning of the file) with the following code in it:

<IfModule brotli_module>
    AddOutputFilterByType BROTLI_COMPRESS text/css text/csv text/html text/plain text/richtext text/sgml text/tab-separated-values application/javascript application/x-javascript httpd/unix-directory
</IfModule>

Then save the .htaccess file in the directory where you want mod_brotli enabled. Have in mind that .htaccess files work recursively, so it will have effect on all the subdirectories as well.

The .htaccess code above will enable mod_brotli for all HTML, SSI, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, CGI, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, and text files.