gzip killing my Pligg

Posted In General - By Geoserv On Monday, July 7th, 2008 With 2 Comments

For the past couple of months I have been trying to optimize 2 of Pligg installs. They were dreadfully slow when you logged in and when you submitted an article, this is a definite turn-off for users and potential members.

I tried optimizing my database by adding an index function, didn’t make any difference, I went through and searched for any errors they may have been bogging it down as well and didn’t find anything.

In the default .htaccess file at the top you will find:

##### Gzip Begin #####
## To enable Gzip and decrease the load times of your Pligg site
## change /home/path/to to your absolute server path and remove the two # from both lines
##php_value auto_prepend_file /home/whatever/public_html/something/begin_gzip.php
##php_value auto_append_file /home/whatever/public_html/something/end_gzip.php

I like most enabled this function by doing what the instructions said.

As a test, I reversed this last week, and disabled it.

Voila, my Pligg install has never been faster. This does however now make me wonder why. It should be the other way around.

Give it a shot on your install if you are experiencing speed issues and let me know if your website speeds up.

I would also like to know if anyone has an explanation as to why this worked for me.