Do you use gZip? What performance advantage?

[rawnet]

Hello,

I've enabled gZip on the vBulletin admin options, with compression of 9, but have noticed no difference - my homepage file size (http://www.servicepals.com/forums/index.php) stayed the same - 91k - which is rather large.

What else should I be doing? I'm running Win2k / IIS5 / PHP4

Please help!!

Cheers,

Ross

[George L]

gzip should not be set any higher than 1 otherwise you use up server resources with little additional benefit..

[rawnet]

Hi Eva,

I've set the level to 1 now, but there's still no difference. Have gZip enabled in vBulletin, have it set to 1 - now what? Should my pages be smaller? By what percentage? The homepage was around 91k, and it's now 95k (although the increase could be due to a larger banner I suspect. Either way, it doesn't make a difference.

What am I missing?

Ross

[George L]

you don't have zlib compiled in PHP (for linux) not sure if it's the same with Windows..

actually read http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthrea...threadid=39181

[Fusion]

PHP4 for Windows come with bundled zlib, it's just a matter of uncommenting the appropriate entry in php.ini.

[rawnet]

Hi Fusion,

Yup, think I've found it in php.ini. Is currently :

; Transparent output compression using the zlib library
; Valid values for this option are 'off', 'on', or a specific buffer size
; to be used for compression (default is 4KB)
zlib.output_compression = Off

Have changed that to "= on" but doesn't seem to make much difference - file size still the same. Shall try rebotting now,

Cheers,

Ross

[Fusion]

There is also an entry at the lower half of the file under Windows-extensions. Uncomment the line ;extension=php_zlib.dll. Only then will zlib-compression actually be used. No reboot required, it's used the next time PHP is used. See phpinfo() to see that it is actually loaded, you'll see a new zlib-section. If zlib doesn't help you, there's always the ZendOptimizer aswell.

[MiF]

How exactly are you checking the size of your pages?

The way compressed pages are served is this:

The server (vBulletin in this case) generates the page.
The server checks to see if your browser supports compression.

If your broswer supports compression then
The server compresses the generated page.
The server tells your browser that it's going to send compressed page

The server sends the page.
The web browser decompresses the page and displays it to you.

The end result is that the page is the same size as it is on the server. However it took less time to transmit it and used less bandwidth because it was compressed.

[MiF]

As to the compression level. I found that compression level up to 7 still provides significant compression savings. Level 8 and 9 still provide savings but not anything significant.

[tubedogg]

Anything above 1 provides the same or very similar benefits as level 1 while increasing the server load (in some cases dramatically) which is why you should not set it above 1.

[Joe Gronlund]

big advantage but i always had mine set to 8, i should set it to 1?

[tubedogg]

Yes.

[rawnet]

ARGH!! Help!!

Hi Fusion,

Please help!! Have uncommented that line, and now getting this message pop up on my server when someone tries to go to a PHP page :

Unable to laod dynamic library "php_zlib.dll"

Where can I get the DLL from?!?!?

Panic panic panic!!!!

[Fusion]

Rawnet, check your php.ini. The following directive has to be properly set for extensions to work.

; Directory in which the loadable extensions (modules) reside.
extension_dir = c:/php/extensions

In short, if this directive is set to ./ you need to copy the dlls you need to the same dir as PHP.EXE resides in. Personally I suggest you use a setting as described above, assuming your PHP-installation went into c:\php.

[rawnet]

Hi Fusion,

Thanks for that - have downloaded the DLL as wasn't included (can be found within the ZIP at http://www.php.net/do_download.php?d....1.1-Win32.zip for anyone who's interested in future), and set up the directory as stated.

But when I activate it, I see lots of gibberesh on the frontend, along the lines of :

‹xÍYisÚHþlWù?ôjjc»Jœ|e–`|ìã’LöKª h,©•–&Sûß÷y»ÈŽÝšu¹¬>ßûl7gIà¿ÙÛmÎã»ÓüK¡ÀBÉ\îΣU¡bV(è½@$œÍ’$*ˆÏ©7w¬;


UM - HEEEEEELP!!! What am I missing? Is there anything else I need to activate?

Thanks so much for the continued help guys,

Cheers for now,

Ross