How to enable either Gzip or Deflate compression via .htaccess?

Question

How to enable either Gzip or Deflate compression via .htaccess and which one is best these days? Code examples needed.

Answer 1

See the Apache mod_deflate documentation, specifically, the "compress everything except images" example. It has worked well for me and would be put into an .htaccess file as follows:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
        # Insert filter
        SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

        # Netscape 4.x has some problems...
        BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

        # Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
        BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

        # MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
        # BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

        # NOTE: Due to a bug in mod_setenvif up to Apache 2.0.48
        # the above regex won't work. You can use the following
        # workaround to get the desired effect:
        BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

        # Don't compress images
        SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
        \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary

        # Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
        Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</IfModule>

And, of course, make sure that you have the following in your httpd.conf file to enable mod_deflate:

LoadModule deflate_module libexec/apache2/mod_deflate.so