🚀 From 2–5 Minutes to < 1 Second: How a Small Nginx Config Change Boosted My Website

A few days ago, I was puzzled about why the website I built felt extremely slow when loading a JavaScript file.

Imagine this: a file of just 2 MB took 2–5 minutes to load in the browser. 😅

After digging into it, the issue turned out to be simple: I forgot to enable gzip in my Nginx configuration.

What is gzip?

gzip is a compression method that allows the server to send smaller-sized files to the browser.

Instead of downloading the full raw file, the browser only needs to fetch the compressed version.

The Fix

I added the following config to my Nginx Proxy Manager:

gzip on;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_min_length 256;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_types
    text/plain
    text/css
    application/json
    application/javascript
    application/x-javascript
    text/javascript
    application/xml
    application/rss+xml
    application/atom+xml
    application/vnd.ms-fontobject
    application/x-font-ttf
    font/opentype
    image/svg+xml
    image/x-icon;

The Result

The website performance improved instantly:
From 2–5 minutes → to less than 1 second for a 2 MB file.

Key Takeaways

• Small optimizations can lead to massive improvements.
• Never underestimate basic server configuration.
• A single setting can completely transform user experience.

Sometimes it’s not expensive hardware or the latest framework that makes a website faster, but rather a simple config tweak like this.

So, if your website feels slow, it might be worth checking whether gzip is enabled on your server.

Have you ever found a performance bottleneck where the solution turned out to be this simple?

Comments

[Ferry Ananda Febian]

reserved

[Eloriva Fashion]

I had the same issue before, and it’s amazing how such a small config tweak can make a huge difference! I tried enabling gzip on my server as well, and the performance boost was instant. A 2 MB file loading in under a second was a game changer. It's crazy how basic server configurations can have such a massive impact on the user experience. Definitely a reminder not to overlook the simple optimizations!

[Chanh Le]

This is one of basic principles in web development: minimize the data (size) transport over the network.