I wanted to gzip the javascript and css files on marketo.com. Again, this technology should be DEFAULT on every web host in the world. I have no idea why they don’t have this turned on. Anyway, after another couple of hours, I found this solution which seemed to work. Specifically, it only worked on MediaTemple. It did not work on this server (Bluehost). I am not sure why. Actually, I am really confused.

The method was this:

• In the root of the web edit file .htaccess. It should contain the following:
  1. AddType application/x-compress .Z
  2. AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz
  3. AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
  4. AddType application/x-httpd-php .php3
  5. AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
  6. AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
  7. AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
  8. AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-php
  9. AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
  10. AddType text/html .js .js.gz
  11.  
  12. AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .js .js.gz
• The CSS for some reason had to be done differently. In an htaccess file in a CSS ONLY directory.
  1. AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .css
  2. php_value auto_prepend_file gzip-css.php
  3. php_flag zlib.output_compression On
• Additionally put a file called gzip-css.php in that directory. It’s contents:
  1. ob_start ("ob_gzhandler");
  2. header ("content-type: text/css; charset: UTF-8");
  3. header ("cache-control: must-revalidate");
  4. $offset = 60 * 60;
  5. $expire = "expires: " . gmdate ("D, d M Y H:i:s", time() + $offset) . " GMT";
  6. header ($expire);
  7. ?>

Ok, so that ended up compressing all of the files I needed. JS, CSS and PHP. So now, why doesn’t it work in BlueHost??