This is the nginx port of mod_pagespeed.

ngx_pagespeed is alpha. If you are interested in test-driving the module, or contributing to the project, see below. For feedback, questions, and to follow the progress of the project:

• ngx-pagespeed-discuss Google Group

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The goal of ngx_pagespeed is to speed up your site and reduce page load time by automatically applying web performance best practices to pages and associated assets (CSS, JavaScript, images) without requiring that you modify your existing content or workflow. Features include:

• Image optimization: stripping meta-data, dynamic resizing, recompression
• CSS & JavaScript minification, concatenation, inlining, and outlining
• Small resource inlining
• Deferring image and JavaScript loading
• HTML rewriting
• Cache lifetime extension
• and more

Nearly all mod_pagespeed features work in ngx_pagespeed; see the ever-shrinking list of missing features.

To see ngx_pagespeed in action, with example pages for each of the optimizations, see our demonstration site.

How to build

Because nginx does not support dynamic loading of modules, you need to compile nginx from source to add ngx_pagespeed. Alternatively, if you're using Tengine you can install ngx_pagespeed without recompiling Tengine.

1. Install mod_pagespeed binary, or follow from source instructions.

2. Install dependencies:

   # These are for RedHat, CentOS, and Fedora.
   $ sudo yum install git gcc-c++ pcre-dev pcre-devel zlib-devel make
   
   # These are for Debian. Ubuntu will be similar.
   $ sudo apt-get install git-core build-essential zlib1g-dev libpcre3 libpcre3-dev
   

3. Check out ngx_pagespeed:

   $ cd ~
   $ git clone https://github.com/pagespeed/ngx_pagespeed.git
   

4. Download and build nginx:

   $ # check http://nginx.org/en/download.html for the latest version
   $ wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.3.15.tar.gz
   $ tar -xvzf nginx-1.3.15.tar.gz
   $ cd nginx-1.3.15/
   $ ./configure --add-module=$HOME/ngx_pagespeed
   $ make install
   

If make fails with unknown type name ‘off64_t’, add --with-cc-opt='-DLINUX=2 -D_REENTRANT -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -march=i686 -pthread' to ./configure and try to make again.

If configure fails with checking for psol ... not found then open objs/autoconf.err and search for psol.

If it's not clear what's wrong from the error message, then send it to the mailing list and we'll have a look at it.

How to use

In your nginx.conf, add to the main or server block:

pagespeed on;

# needs to exist and be writable by nginx
pagespeed FileCachePath /var/ngx_pagespeed_cache;

In every server block where pagespeed is enabled add:

#  Ensure requests for pagespeed optimized resources go to the pagespeed
#  handler and no extraneous headers get set.
location ~ "\.pagespeed\.([a-z]\.)?[a-z]{2}\.[^.]{10}\.[^.]+" { add_header "" ""; }
location ~ "^/ngx_pagespeed_static/" { }
location ~ "^/ngx_pagespeed_beacon$" { }
location /ngx_pagespeed_statistics { allow 127.0.0.1; deny all; }
location /ngx_pagespeed_message { allow 127.0.0.1; deny all; }

To confirm that the module is loaded, fetch a page and check that you see the X-Page-Speed header:

$ curl -s -D- 'http://localhost:8050/some_page/' | grep X-Page-Speed
X-Page-Speed: 1.4.0.0-2729

Looking at the source of a few pages you should see various changes, such as urls being replaced with new ones like yellow.css.pagespeed.ce.lzJ8VcVi1l.css.

When reading the mod_pagespeed documentation, keep in mind that you need to make a small adjustment to configuration directives: replace ModPagespeed with pagespeed:

mod_pagespeed.conf:
  ModPagespeedEnableFilters collapse_whitespace,add_instrumentation
  ModPagespeedRunExperiment on
  ModPagespeedExperimentSpec id=3;percent=50;default
  ModPagespeedExperimentSpec id=4;percent=50

ngx_pagespeed.conf:
  pagespeed EnableFilters collapse_whitespace,add_instrumentation;
  pagespeed RunExperiment on;
  pagespeed ExperimentSpec "id=3;percent=50;default";
  pagespeed ExperimentSpec "id=4;percent=50";

For more configuration details, see the differences from mod_pagespeed configuration wiki page.

There are extensive system tests which cover most of ngx_pagespeed's functionality. Consider testing your installation.