How to Optimize Your Website with Compression in the cPanel

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Published Feb 16, 2025

A commonly asked question with website hosting is, “How do I optimize my website using compression?” This question is often asked after seeing a performance report indicating that their site could benefit from compression being turned on. Fortunately, the option for compression is loaded by default on InMotion Hosting Servers, but it is not enabled for the website unless you turn it on within cPanel.

cPanel provides this functionality with a few simple clicks. Enabling this feature tells the Apache server to compress the content when it replies to a request. This helps speed up the transmission of website components when sent to the viewer. This option can be enabled for all files on the website, or only for a specific type of file.

Let’s take a look at cPanel and see how to enable this feature.

As you can see here, I have already logged into cPanel. Scroll down until you find the option labeled OPTIMIZE WEBSITE

Here you can see that there are three options to Compress Content:

Disabled
Compress All Content
Compress specified MIME types

You can enable the option to compress ALL file types that are on your website. This means that when a request is made to view your website all of the files will be compressed by the server before it is transmitted.

You can also elect to compress only certain file types. You would need to type in the file types using the MIME designations for the file.

MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions - it is simply an Internet standard to classify file types. It’s initial purpose was to identify file types for email. It’s also used to help internet browsers identify file types. For a list of MIME file types, you can use your favorite internet search engine and simply search for “mime file types”.

When you add the file type into the blank, separate each file type with a space. The examples include:

text/html
text/plain
text/xml

When you have completed adding your file types, or if you have selected to compress ALL files, simply click on Update to enable compression.

InMotion Hosting was founded in 2001 and provides personal and business web hosting for everyone! For more information about InMotion Hosting and the services we provide see here:

https://www.inmotionhosting.com