[RFC] Enable gzip by default

[XTF]

Could gzip be enabled by default? It improves page load time (and saves bandwidth), downside *might* be higher CPU usage. But CPU usage is rarely a problem and I think enabling it by default is better.

[DavidIQ]

Shared hosting accounts get suspended all the time for high CPU usage due to something they're doing on their site. So using more CPU is definitely an issue for most users.

[brunoais]

I agree with DavidIQ. Anything that can be done to save some CPU cycles in shared hosts (including free hosting) is welcome.
The only exception would be with static content but they are already cached in the client so it wouldn't be that much useful to also cache the gziped version in the server.

[XTF]

Bandwidth is frequently an issue on shared hosting as well. How much extra CPU time does gzip really take?

[Master_Cylinder]

Enough that they put a warning about it in the ACP option to enable it? I agree with the others; leave it disabled, as a default, and enable it if you want/need.

[DavidIQ]

I host a site that runs Coppermine as part of the phpBB installation and the Coppermine application was using up enough CPU to cause the account to get suspended. Ended up having to disable Coppermine for a while and later upgrading it to resolve some of the issues. Granted I'm not saying that GZip had anything to do with it and Coppermine is not the stablest project around, but it's just an example that high CPU usage suspensions probably happen more often than high bandwidth usage suspensions. It's one of those settings that comes with the product but you enable at your own risk.

Of value might be some statistics on how much more CPU GZip uses in phpBB when enabled just to satisfy the curiosity.

[A_Jelly_Doughnut]

I'm going to guess that GZip is a trivial amount of CPU time compared to phpBB's actual functionality. Loading several pages here at Area51, the generation times (as reported in the footer) are between 0.650s and 0.770s. Gzip will compress a typical HTML page (10kB-20kB) in under 0.005s even on anemic hardware.

[Master_Cylinder]

How do you determine "typical?" Is typical a forum with a lot of images or one with few? How long does it take to compress a page full of posts with five 2meg images and 30k characters (half of the default setting for one post), plus avatars, signatures, ranks, etc in it? It might be trivial...maybe not. It's not an issue if it's off by default though.

This page takes .745 and the only images are a few avatars/ranks and 1 sig image, with a small amount of text. Plus it took over 1.2s to edit and redirect back.

[XTF]

How do you determine "typical?" Is typical a forum with a lot of images or one with few?

You really don't know what you're talking about, do you?

[Master_Cylinder]

I've only been an IT professional for 20+ years doing network/server administration and management so I might know something.

Don't get butthurt because I didn't support your idea...