Google open sources Apache server speed mod

Google has open sourced an Apache server module designed to speed website performance. Presumably, the module is based on the mystery Google Web Server the company uses to serve its own pages.

Known as "mod_pagespeed," the Apache module speeds performance "on the fly" in 15 separate ways, which include optimizing page caching, minimizing client-server round trips, and reducing payload size. "mod_pagespeed is an open-source Apache module that automatically optimizes web pages and resources on them," Google says. "It does this by rewriting the resources using filters that implement web performance best practices. Webmasters and web developers can use mod_pagespeed to improve the performance of their web pages when serving content with the Apache HTTP Server."

The module can change pages built by your content management system (CMS) without requiring changes to the CMS itself, and when an image's HTML context changes, it can re-compress the image so that only the required bytes are served. It includes several filters for optimizing JavaScript, HTML, and CSS stylesheets, and additional filters for JPEG and PNG images.

Google says it has seen the module reduce page load times by up to 50 per cent on a random sample of sites. "In other words, [it's] essentially speeding up websites by about 2x, and sometimes even faster," the company said in a blog post.

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