HELLCAT's Realtime Page Compressor

This is my version of a realtime page compressor.
The idea is based on ShiningArcanine's port of the "Realtime Template Compressor", that is also based on the original concept by Logician, and can be found in this thread:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=83248

But since my version doesn't contain any of his original code anymore (even the regular expressions have been rewritten) and I added a bunch of new features I finally decided to release this one as a speperate thing.

Features:

• Copmresses the final HTML output sent to the browser by ~10% to ~15%
  (see bellow for how this is achived)
• Full controll via AdminCP options
  (you can turn it ON/OFF and choose if, and how the stats should be displayed - see screenshot)
• Stats display can be fully customized via template edit
• Areaes with intentional/wanted whitespace are left untouched
  (So this does not mess up user inputted text, text in [code] blocks and the such....)
• JavaScript blocks are kept intact and functional

What does this exately do?
This plugin strips all unneccesary whitespace, linebreaks and HTML comments out of the final HTML code that vBulletin sends to the browser.
This way the pages get a bit smaller (saving bandwidth) and the browser often renders the pages faster since there's no whitespace it must skip.

Passages that are enclosed by <pre> and <textarea> tags are left untouched completely so text posted in [code], [php] and other bb-tags of that sort are not affected and kept like the user intended them to be.
Passages enclosed in <script> tags are only striped from leading whitspace but not of linebreaks - this way JavaScript (and other) code will remain functional and does not get messed up.


How to install
Couldn't be more easy.
If you have any other page/template complression tool installed -> uninstall it first.

Then go to "AdminCP -> Product Manager -> Add/Import product" and import the .XML you downloaded here.

Now go to the "vBulletin Options" in the AdminCP, under "Help Server Settings and Optimization Options" you will find the "Realtime Page Compressor Options" settings group.
Open the settings, change them to what you want and hit "SAVE"
(It's important that you SAVE the options even when you want to use the defaults! For vB to actually create theese settings in the DB they have to be saved at least once!!!)

Done

More details are in the README.


Have fun!


UPDATE 1.10
Not a day old and here comes the first update

• Added compatibility for the "Any Media BB Code"
  Before the Any Media BB Code was screwed up in IE when the compressor was active -> FIXED
• Raised compresseion ratio another 1 to 3 percent
  "Code comments" (stuff between "/*" and "*/" - used in CSS and JS for example) are now striped as well.

Update 1.20

• Added the option to show the stats display to admins only.
  Go to "AdminCP -> vBulletin Options -> Real Time Compressor Settings" and you will find the new option there.
• Fixed the "uncached template" issue
• Tweaked the RegEx' a bit more
  But they still need quite some optimization/tweaking

Update 1.21

• Added HTML tag to exclude blocks from compression
  Put blocks of HTML source between <nocompress>Your Source</nocompress> tags to have it untouched by the page compression.

[Hellcat]

vBulletin has a build in option for using gzip compression, no need for a gzip.php or such.

Just go to your AdminCP -> vBulletin Settings and enable GZIP.
This will (ZIP) compress the HTML page, then send it to the browser that will uncompress and display the page.
This way you can save quite some bandwidth on your server, indeed.

This adds some more loadon the server (depending on compression level) and not all browsers support it (in that case the compression in skipped).

[Orcun]

Hi Hellcat,

I think it does not compress the comments that are included in themes.
For example,

I have a comment like that,

<!-- [START HACK='vB Pager'

// vB Phrases

and I can still see it in the code. Deleting those lines shall provide better compression. What u say ?

Is there a way to decide what kind of comments should be removed ? To a way to change compression level ?

I cant see it in the AdminCP options. Just 3 there.

[Hellcat]

To make it compatibel with the AnyMedia BBCode the compressor ignores (leaves) HTML comments that contain a square bracket "[".

Removing those from comments will also get that comment removed from the final output.

(Didn't find a better yet to determine if the comment is AnyMedia)

The "//" comments can (and should) be removed as well, yes.
I'll put that one into the next update

[Codeman05]

well I guess from a bandwidth perspective this is potentially worthwhile, but not from a page load time standpoint....in my case anyway.

I am showing a 10-15% compression. However, my page load times go from ~.10-.14s with this disabled, and goes to ~.21-.25s with this hack enabled.

Did anyone else notice this? Or is getting improved performance along with the compression?

Good hack in any case, definately not trying to knock that

[Zia]

Originally Posted by Hellcat

vBulletin has a build in option for using gzip compression, no need for a gzip.php or such.
Just go to your AdminCP -> vBulletin Settings and enable GZIP.
This will (ZIP) compress the HTML page, then send it to the browser that will uncompress and display the page.
This way you can save quite some bandwidth on your server, indeed.
This adds some more loadon the server (depending on compression level) and not all browsers support it (in that case the compression in skipped).

Yes Sir..i had it enable ..i set the compression level to 1....i read many place that 1 is the best...not 9...

Thanu Sir..i got reply of my curiousness

thnakx

[high]* Zia still waiting for agressive compression [/high]

[GamerJunk.net]

[page compression: 32.33 k/36.59 k (11.64%)]
Page generated in 0.76232 seconds with 9 queries (2 queries for uncached templates) [Server Loads: 10.27 11.02 : 9.51]
Uncached templates: page (1)
Uncached templates: userfield_textbox (15)

What does that mean? It's on my "page" template for my Extra Info

[Hellcat]

The uncached templates come most likely from another extension, maybe that extra info thingy.

[delds]

Excellent mod/plugin, good work.

[itorrents]

A must have I say thanks for all your work.

[BigTrucK72]

Geezus Hellcat... you really rocked this one. Saving anywhere from low to high 30s @ http://forums.xedge.net

Thanks and keep up the good work!