We’re always looking for ways to help you squeeze every bit of performance out of your Clarive instance. That’s why we now recommend enabling both Brotli and Gzip compression in your NGINX configuration. With these two working in tandem, your web assets will be delivered faster, using less bandwidth—and your users will thank you for the speed boost!
Why Enable Both Brotli and Gzip?
- Brotli often achieves better compression ratios than Gzip, especially on text-based assets like CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.
- Gzip has universal support across all browsers and proxies.
- By enabling both, you get the best of both worlds: modern browsers will pick Brotli, and older clients will fall back to Gzip.
Step-by-Step: Update Your nginx.conf
- SSH into your Clarive server.
- Backup your existing configuration:
`cp /opt/clarive/config/nginx/nginx.conf /opt/clarive/config/nginx/nginx.conf.bak
`
- Open the file in your favorite editor:
`vi /opt/clarive/config/nginx/nginx.conf `
- Locate the http { … } block near the top of the file.
- Paste the following lines inside the http { section, just below any existing include or log_format directives:
`http {
# -------------------------------------------------------------------
# Clarive: Enable Brotli & Gzip Compression
# -------------------------------------------------------------------
brotli on;
brotli_static off; # 'on' only if you have pre-compressed files
brotli_comp_level 4;
brotli_types text/plain text/css text/javascript text/js
text/xml application/json application/javascript
application/x-javascript application/xml
application/xml+rss application/x-font-ttf
image/svg+xml font/opentype
font/woff font/woff2 font/woff3
application/x-font-woff;
gzip on;
gzip_min_length 8000; # only compress responses ≥8KB
gzip_comp_level 5; # compression level (1–9)
gzip_proxied any; # compress even when via a proxy
gzip_types text/plain
text/css
application/json
application/javascript
application/xml
text/xml
image/svg+xml; # MIME types to compress
gzip_vary on; # add “Vary: Accept-Encoding”
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
# ... the rest of your http section ...
}
`- Save the file and exit your editor.
- Test the new configuration and reload NGINX:
`nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx `
- Or use the Clarive nginx server restart if Nginx runs from Clarive itself
`cla nginx-restart -c YOURCONFIG `
Enable HTTP2
Now, Brotli will only work if http2 is enabled in your Nginx, and the browser on the other side also supports it (all modern browsers should).
Check your nginx configuration, add the http2 attribute to any port you need it to listen to (if it's not there yet):
`server {
listen 443 ssl http2; # <----- http2 should be here to be enabled
...
}
`Verify Your Compression
After reloading, you can quickly check that Brotli and Gzip are working:
`# Brotli test (modern browsers) curl -H \"Accept-Encoding: br\" -I https://your-clarive-domain.com \ | grep -i content-encoding # Gzip test (fallback) curl -H \"Accept-Encoding: gzip\" -I https://your-clarive-domain.com \ | grep -i content-encoding `
You should see content-encoding: br for Brotli and content-encoding: gzip for Gzip.
Need Help?
If you hit any snags—or just want to chat about other optimizations—our support team is here for you. Drop us a line at support@clarive.com or open a ticket via the Clarive portal.
Happy compressing! ?