PHP Optimise Pages

So you've read our Load Time tutorial, and now you want to optimise your pages, right? You won't believe how easy this is. Really. It's just one line of code. That's right, just one.

Before you get too excited though, you need to make sure your server or hosting provider supports it.
This is easily checked by running the phpinfo(); function.

This method can't be used with UTF8 character encoding declared at the start of the script. Try the .htaccess method instead.

Do a search for the ZLib Support section. Is it enabled? Yes? Great! No? Contact your hosting provider, or server administrator. If you are the server administrator, recompile PHP with:

--with-zlib

We are going to use ob_start();. This function is responsible for holding the output of the script until it's ready to be shown. If you have the ZLib Support enabled, add the following to the top of your PHP script.

As ever, it's always good practice to close or end a function that we started. Therefore, you should place the following at the bottom of your PHP file.

Move on to the next page to find out how to automatically enable this for all files on the server using .htaccess.

To enable the compression to automatically work on any file within the folder or sub folder of the .htaccess, simply add the following line:

php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler

That's it! You should now have faster load times for both, your server and client.

An example of this is a page load of 0.43 seconds will be loaded within 0.07 seconds by using compression.

Warning: the compression can only be done once. Do NOT use both the htaccess and PHP. Pick one.