lithiumsixteen

Thanks for the feedback. Most likely your VM server is running Nginx. That is not a bad thing – it’s just different. WordPress uses .htaccess files to modify certain server behavior by adding “rewrite rules” to .htaccess. This plugin uses that same method that is built into WordPress. It will work in most cases, but unfortunately not all cases. Since Nginx does not have .htaccess-type capability and WordPress cannot automatically modify the server configuration for you, it cannot generate the rewrite rule.

If you are running Nginx on your server, the primary Nginx configuration file is /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. WordPress can’t make the updates automatically, but you can manually add this code to the file: gzip_vary on.
If you are not running Nginx, it’s possible you have another plugin that is reverting the .htaccess changes. Lastly, it’s possible that the permissions settings on your server prevent WordPress from editing the .htaccess file. Thanks again!

That is an excellent question, and I apologize for not getting back to you more quickly. The short answer is that you don’t have to wait. If it does not work for you right away, try navigating to Settings > Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard, and then just click Save Changes (no need to make any actual changes).

The purpose of this is to “flush rewrite rules”, which is just a signal to your server to read new rules (such as specifying a vary) instead of using a cached version. Saving the permalink settings is the easiest way to do this automatically in WordPress.

If the plugin still doesn’t work for you after this, then unfortunately it is probably not going to meet your needs. This is likely due to your web host’s server configuration, and I recommend contacting your web host to ask for a recommendation. You could also try the plugin “Zendy Speed: Encoding” which is another plugin in the www.remarpro.com repository that looks like it is intended address the same issue.

I hope this is helpful!