Static site serves html, css, javascript and images. These files can be compressed to reduce bandwidth.
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# Minify
[Minify](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minification_(programming)) html, css and js to remove characters that are not required for the code to function. This process involves removing white space/tab, line break and comments. I read somewhere that Google saves gigabytes of bandwidth just by removing line break, which surprised me how much line break alone costs when you have the popularity of Google.com.
In Hexo, there are two approaches.
### hexo-all-minifier
1. The easiest way is using hexo-all-minifier. Unlike others, this plugin also compress images as well. To use it, simply add the following line to `package.json`:
```json
"hexo-all-minifier": "^0.5.2"
```
2. Note you should add a comma at the end of previous line, but no comma at the last value. The last few lines look like this:
```json
...
"hexo-renderer-stylus": "latest",
"hexo-server": "latest",
"hexo-all-minifier": "^0.5.2"
}
}
```
3. Run `$ npm install` to install it.
4. To enable it, put `all_minifier: true` line at `_config.yml`.
5. Deploy.
To see this in action, check out this [job log](https://gitlab.com/curben/curben.gitlab.io/-/jobs/101703188). As you can see, the resulting files are around 20% smaller. However, do note that its image compression dependencies have some [vulnerabilities](https://snyk.io/test/npm/hexo-all-minifier). This can be patched using [Snyk](https://snyk.io/).
### hexo-yam
Despite the convenience of hexo-all-minifier, I don't use it due to the vulnerabity. I don't need its image compression as I plan to use [Cloudinary](https://cloudinary.com/) via [hexo-cloudinary](https://github.com/maliMirkec/hexo-cloudinary) plugin.
Thus, I switch to hexo-yam which doesn't offer image compression. To use, add the following line to `package.json`:
2.`$ npm install` and enable the plugin by putting `neat_enable: true` to `_config.yml`.
3. Deploy.
# Compression
[Compression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression) uses more advanced technique to reduce the file size even further. Most modern web browsers support gzip decompression and prefer it (with appropriate HTTP header). As you might know from zipping a text file, this can yield significant reduction in file size. For example, my home page `index.html` is less than half smaller (3.3KB > 1.2KB). Check it out [here](https://gitlab.com/curben/curben.gitlab.io/-/jobs/101703188/artifacts/browse/public/).
***Update:*** hexo-yam v0.5.0 onwards offer gzip and brotli compressions. After you install it, it will automatically compress assets files to `.gz` and `.br` whenever hexo generate/deploy/server. This means the command `$ find ....` as shown below is no longer required.
1. Linux distro has built-in gzip. Install brotli through apt/dnf/yum/pacman.
2. To compress, simply run the following commands after you generate static files (`$ hexo generate`),
