gzip your CSS

Step 1
Create a new file, call it 'gzip-css.php' copy the following snippet and upload to the 'vbulletin_css' folder:

PHP Code:

<?php
ob_start('ob_gzhandler');
header('Content-type: text/css; charset: UTF-8');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate');
header('Expires: Thu, 3 Jan 2007 23:53:18 GMT');
?>

Step 2
create a .htaccess file, put this in the same directory as above, put in the following snippet:

PHP Code:

php_value auto_prepend_file gzip-css.php 


Step 3
Open the adminfunctions_template.php file located in the 'includes' directory. Look for the following:

PHP Code:

$cssfilename = 'clientscript/vbulletin_css/style-' . substr(md5(microtime()), 8, 8) . '-' . str_pad($styleid, 5, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT) . '.php'; 


change it to

PHP Code:

$cssfilename = 'clientscript/vbulletin_css/style-' . substr(md5(microtime()), 8, 8) . '-' . str_pad($styleid, 5, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT) . '.css'; 


Now login to you vb control panel, re-generate the css file and your done. Enjoy

[Zia]

hmm then no need to use this att all....

[HeRCuL70]

is it working at winodws servers?

[briansol]

is step 3 bakwards?

I had .css in there, not .php

[Hemanth]

Good work..

But is there any increase in performance?

[Zachery]

Increase preformace would be removing gzip, decreasing preformance would be adding it back.

[El-Gazaly]

This code
$cssfilename = 'clientscript/vbulletin_css/style-' . substr(md5(microtime()), 8, 8) . '-' . str_pad($styleid, 5, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT) . '.css';
is in file alreadey
and iam not editing it before

[Code Monkey]

This is pointless since browsers cache all css and javascript when they are seperate files. It IS why you should always have them in a seperate file. Most webservers are running mod_deflate or equivilents that compress text in a way that browser can interpret. Browsers check and compare the time and date of last update for css and javascript files before downloading. So unless you have changed the css file, they will not be downloading the css in the first place.

But, do as you please.

[ShiningArcanine]

Personally, I think gzipping css files will not add as much bandwidth savings as gzipping .php files would but more bandwidth savings and faster initial page loads make doing something like this worth it.