14 DAY TRIAL // Last year, Google revealed the mod_pagespeed module for the Apache web server. The module optimizes a web page's code and resources, making the site load faster. At the time, Go Daddy, one of the largest hosting providers, said it will deploy the module for all its Linux-based servers. The module is now live and can be used by Go Daddy clients.
"Go Daddy, the top web hosting provider and world's largest domain name registrar, announced that they would roll out the mod_pagespeed feature for their Linux Web hosting customers," Google wrote.
"The feature is now available and is in use by Go Daddy customers who have already started to report faster webpage load times," it announced.
The module is now available to anyone using Go Daddy, but it's also available to anyone else under an open-source license. Google provides packaged versions of the module for Debian and Red Hat-based Linux distributions.
Mod_pagespeed works by deploying several optimizations, 17 at the moment, in a web page's source code but also its resources, like image files.
"By using several filters that implement web performance best practices, mod_pagespeed rewrites web page resources to automatically optimize their content. The filters improve performance for JavaScript, HTML and CSS, as well as JPEG and PNG images," Google explained.
Mod_pagespeed is fully configurable so you can choose what optimizations to use. It makes full use of caching, for example by extracting code, CSS or JavaScript, from a HTML file and placing it in a separate file. Conversely, it can also collapse several files into just one HMTL file, to minimize the number of resources to be downloaded.
The module can also optimize the content of the files, for example by removing whitespace or minifying JavaScript or CSS, to make the files smaller. Webmasters can enable or disable any of the filters to suite the particularities of their websites.