[Plugin: W3 Total Cache] Google Page Speed suggests compression. But it appears to be on

Hello,
I’m not too sure about Google’s Page speed. We’ve been dealing with issues over the past week on this ourselves. Google tells us to use browser caching, But it’s enabled in Total Cache, but even if I copy and paste cache code directly into the .htaccess file along with gzip settings, and setting the server to gzip everything automaticly, PageSpeed still doesn’t seem to recognise any of the changes to the htaccess whatsoever..

At this point, I’m not sure why google can’t see these changes when using chrome or firefox with firebug, it’s obvious that browser caching and gzip is working.

Try testing your site here, https://www.webpagetest.org/

Usually, the first view will show your site in an unchached state, then when it finishes its tests, the second view will show how fast your site loaded with caching, gzip ect.. Maybe you can try to compare the results as we have been trying to do.

Hope this helps,
Chris

Actually, Part of the problem may be your settings.

On the General Settings Tab, Make sure Auto is selected, Since you are using Disk, Use Default, JSMin (Default) and Default settings.

Then click on the minify tab…

For xhtml and html, Just check the first 4 boxes, don’t check line break removal.. This will allow you to view your source to make sure things are working.

For JS and CSS Settings, Make sure only the Enable box is checked. Don’t use combine, preserved or line break removal.

Once you save your settings and clear the caches, you should now be able to view your source in a nice clean format and all your js and css files should appear as just one file.

I think I remembered all that correctly, Hope it helps,
Chris

Thanks for the advice! My Google Page Speed score went from 88 to 91% and the compression message is gone.

Hmmm. After upgrading one of my sites to 3.3 and re-activating w3tc and clearing all caches, I’m getting a 96 with no compression flags at Online Page Speed. But when I use Chrome’s developer tools page speed, I’m getting an 81 with the following:

Compressing the following resources with gzip could reduce their transfer size by 294.5KiB (68% reduction).
Compressing https://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v1/yD/r/aZuLW8njTPZ.js could save 122.1KiB (71% reduction).
Compressing https://robreillyorgan.com/wp-content/w3tc/min/88cc833d.d2a698.js?e04429 could save 68.7KiB (64% reduction).
Compressing https://static.addtoany.com/menu/page.js could save 32.9KiB (66% reduction).
Compressing https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Frobreillyorgan.com%2F2011%2F1… could save 25.8KiB (69% reduction).
Compressing https://robreillyorgan.com/wp-content/w3tc/min/86031381.cb8150.css?e04429 could save 24.3KiB (81% reduction).
Compressing https://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js could save 19.2KiB (60% reduction).
Compressing https://static.addtoany.com/menu/sm7.html could save 1.5KiB (54% reduction).

OK, it has nothing to do with WP 3.3. I’m getting compression suggestions and lower scores from the Chrome plugin on 2 other sites that are still on 3.2.1, but scores for all 4 sites are good at Page Speed Online, with no compression suggestions.

I wonder what’s up with the chrome extension?

Rob

Depending on your server, W3TC is only going to enable gzip for minified files. You will need to make sure mod_deflate is working properly otherwise.

I was also confused by pagespeed, Yslow and webpagetest on gzip compression’s true status. tweak based on hte suggestions above and gained soem additional performance especially on TTFB.

thx