gzip Compression and Load Speed

[potentmix]

I've been persuaded that gzip enabled sites get a plus as one of the prime ranking factors on Google. And take a look at: http://code.google.com/speed/page-sp...zipCompression

Gzipped sites load faster and save on bandwidth. However, I'm not having any success in setting gzip up with Socrates, although I'm not 100% certain the problem is theme related.

So, to test this, I opened the header file and placed the following code BEFORE the DOCTYPE line at the very top of the page.

<?php if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip')) ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); else ob_start(); ?>

First I got an error message that this was an unsupported gzip code. So, I tried it on another theme on the same server, and encountered no problem. Subsequently, I got the Socrates site to load, and went over to http://aruljohn.com/gziptest.php where the test revealed that the Socrates page was NOT gzipped. Running the same test with the other theme on the same server, showed that the page there was gzipped.

I'd like to inquire whether this issue has been addressed with Socrates, since I'd like to be able to gzip my Socrates sites to enhance load speed and save bandwidth.

[lynnth]

Dan addresses this in this thread:
http://www.socratestheme.com/forum/showthread.php?t=218

It is a planned task. Dan will have to post an update on when they expect it to happen.

[potentmix]

Dan addresses this in this thread:
http://www.socratestheme.com/forum/showthread.php?t=218

It is a planned task. Dan will have to post an update on when they expect it to happen.

How does that thread relate to gzip?

[jnewgent]

PotentMix,

All php, css, and html is being compressed. It is only the javascript that isnt being compressed. And that is why you are receiving the 'Not GZipped' message.

A handful of the js queries that are being used in Socrates are actually Google's and being called from Google. If you look at that header.php file, you will see that it contains some js calls via the script path to its location at Google. As such, the compression would need to be done from where Socrates is pulling that script query, and in this particular instance, that means Google.

Here is a snippet:

<?php wp_enqueue_script( 'comment-reply' ); ?>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

As Dan mentioned, we may be adding compressed javascript soon.

Until then, if you wish to compress the script manually, you can download all of the js queries from their location at Google, compress them, upload them to a location on your localhost, and then edit the header.php file to reflect that path.

As it stands now, a basic install of Socrates has an 80/100 page load time, according to Firebug. This is already a very fast load time, but as always we seek to improve.

[jnewgent]

I would also like to add a list of Performance-Optimization that has already been implemented by our developers:

Combine external CSS
Enable compression
Optimize images
Serve static content from a cookieless domain
Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header
Remove unused CSS
Minify HTML
Minify JavaScript
Minimize DNS lookups
Put CSS in the document head
Remove query strings from static resources
Serve scaled images
Specify a cache validator
Specify image dimensions
Use efficient CSS selectors
Avoid bad requests
Minimize redirects
Minimize request size
Optimize the order of styles and scripts
Parallelize downloads across hostnames
Serve resources from a consistent URL
Specify a character set early

As you can see our developers are quite diligent and have already implemented a substantial amount of Page-Load-Enhancing techniques.
And, we will add even more soon.

[potentmix]

Thanks for clarifying all that. I'll pass for now on compressing js.