{"id":1643,"date":"2013-08-19T13:20:30","date_gmt":"2013-08-19T13:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/?p=1643"},"modified":"2016-04-07T12:57:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T12:57:47","slug":"googles-pagespeed-module-apache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/googles-pagespeed-module-apache\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Google’s New PageSpeed Module for Apache"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google’s new PageSpeed Apache Module<\/a> is incredible. The number of options available to improve performance on the assets served from your web server will blow your mind. I found that the default configuration worked well, but I did decide to add a few options that weren’t part of their “core set”.<\/p>\n

I did however hit a few snags in the installation and configuration of the module. Nothing serious, but I thought it was worth pointing them out, in case others run into the same problems.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

Installation<\/h3>\n

> yum install at<\/code><\/p>\n

Package at-… already installed and latest version<\/span><\/p>\n

Nothing to do<\/span><\/p>\n

This is okay, it just means that at is already installed.<\/p>\n


\n> rpm -U mod-pagespeed-*.rpm<\/code><\/span><\/p>\n

error: File not found by glob: mod-pagespeed-*.rpm<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The error occurs because the -U option means upgrade. I’m not sure why Google suggests using this option in their installation docs.<\/p>\n

The approach that works is:<\/p>\n

> rpm -i mod-pagespeed-*.rpm<\/code><\/p>\n

If it works, great. If not, you might get an error like this:<\/p>\n

error: File not found by glob: mod-pagespeed-*.rpm<\/span><\/p>\n

In this case, try installing with yum<\/em>. You’ll need to setup the correct repositories first. This post<\/a> has detail on setting up the repos, then installing with yum.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Configuration<\/h3>\n

At this point, if you’ve installed an Apache module before, you assume that you need to head over to your httpd.conf file and add this line:<\/p>\n

LoadModule pagespeed_module modules\/mod_pagespeed.so<\/code><\/span><\/p>\n

Not true!<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The PageSpeed Module has already been added to Apache’s config, even though you don’t see a LoadModule directive.<\/p>\n

The installation process actually created a new configuration file in your server’s conf.d directory. This file is called pagespeed.conf.<\/p>\n

The installation actually assumes that your httpd.conf has the following directive in place:<\/p>\n

Include conf.d\/*.conf<\/code><\/p>\n

Apache comes standard with this directive in place, but some admins and hosts remove this line for security reasons (so any script or unauthorized person can’t just place a conf file in the conf.d folder). So, keep this in mind if the module does not load automatically for you.
\nOh, once your done configuring, don’t forget to restart apache!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tips<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. You may find that PageSpeed’s server-side caching is a little to strong when you are in development mode on a website. Luckily, you can turn off page speed on an individual virtual host basis, i.e.:<VirtualHost *:80>
    \nServerName dev.mysite.com
    \nDocumentRoot \/var\/www\/html\/mysite_com\/dev<\/code><\/p>\n

    ModPagespeed Off<\/p>\n

    <\/VirtualHost><\/li>\n

  2. If you need to make a quick change to a site that has mod_pagespeed enabled, just append\n
    ?ModPagespeed=off<\/span><\/pre>\n
    to the URL. This query string parameter will cause mod_pagespeed to disable itself.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    Google’s new PageSpeed Apache Module is incredible. I did however hit a few snags in the installation and configuration of the module. Nothing serious, but I thought it was worth pointing them out, in case others run into the same problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amp_status":""},"categories":[237,41],"tags":[151],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1643"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2477,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions\/2477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sitekickr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}