Static Compression

Revela can pre-compress your static files with Gzip and Brotli for faster loading.

Do you need this? If you're using GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, or Cloudflare Pages – no! These platforms compress automatically. This plugin is for self-hosted servers, AWS S3, or basic web hosts.

📦 Pre-Generated

Compressed files created at build time, not on every request.

🚀 About 80% Smaller

HTML, CSS, and JS files shrink a lot with Brotli: about 80% for this website's own pages (HTML −80%, CSS −78%, JS −69%).

⚡ No Work per Request

Servers send the pre-compressed files as they are instead of compressing every request.

Installation

The Standalone edition has Compress built in. In the Full edition, install it from the bundled packages:

revela plugin install Compress

Usage

Compress Your Site

# After generating your site
revela generate compress

Note: Compression runs separately, not as part of generate all. Your server must be configured to serve pre-compressed files.

In a terminal, compression shows a live progress bar; in CI logs or redirected output it prints plain progress lines instead (one about every 10 %).

Running it again only compresses what changed. Revela keeps a .gz/.br file when the page it was made from has exactly the same content as last time and the compressed file itself is untouched; everything else is compressed again. The summary shows how many files were compressed and how many were unchanged.

Note: revela generate pages (and therefore generate all) removes all compressed files before it writes new pages, so no outdated .gz/.br file can be served. After such a build, the next revela generate compress compresses everything again.

The local revela serve preview server automatically negotiates existing .br and .gz variants using the browser's Accept-Encoding header. Production servers still need their equivalent static Brotli/Gzip configuration.

Remove Compressed Files

revela clean compress

What Gets Compressed?

File Type	Typical Savings
HTML	70-85%
CSS	75-90%
JavaScript	65-80%
JSON	70-85%
SVG	50-70%
XML	70-85%

Images are skipped – they're already optimized (AVIF, WebP, JPG).

Output Structure

Your files remain unchanged. Compressed versions are added alongside:

output/
├── index.html          ← Original (10 KB)
├── index.html.gz       ← Gzip (2.5 KB)
├── index.html.br       ← Brotli (2.1 KB)
├── _assets/
│   ├── main.css
│   ├── main.css.gz
│   └── main.css.br

Revela remembers which .gz and .br files it created in .revela/compress/ownership.json in your project, not in the output, so that record is never uploaded with your site. Together with each file it stores a fingerprint of the page it was compressed from, which is how it recognises unchanged pages. revela clean compress removes only those files and never touches other .gz/.br files you put there yourself.

Example Output

╭─Success────────────────────────────╮
│ Compression complete!              │
│                                    │
│ Summary:                           │
│   Files:      14                   │
│   Compressed: 3                    │
│   Unchanged:  11                   │
│   Original:   1.22 MB              │
│                                    │
│ Compressed sizes:                  │
│   Gzip:    93.4 KB (92.5% savings) │
│   Brotli:  61.6 KB (95.1% savings) │
╰────────────────────────────────────╯

When Do You Need This Plugin?

Platform	Need Plugin?	Reason
GitHub Pages	❌ No	Compresses automatically
Netlify	❌ No	Compresses automatically
Vercel	❌ No	Compresses automatically
Cloudflare Pages	❌ No	Compresses automatically
AWS S3 + CloudFront	🟡 Optional	CloudFront compresses, but pre-compressed is faster
AWS S3 (direct)	✅ Yes	No automatic compression
nginx	✅ Yes	Use `gzip_static on` for pre-compressed files
Apache	⚙️ Needs RewriteRule

Pipeline Order

Compression is not part of revela generate all. Run it separately after generating your site:

revela generate all
revela generate compress

This ensures all content exists before compressing.

Compression Settings

The plugin uses maximum compression for smallest files:

Format	Level	Browser Support
Gzip	9 (max)	All browsers
Brotli	11 (max)	Modern browsers (95%+)

Files under 256 bytes are skipped – compression overhead exceeds savings.

Server Configuration

Pre-compressed files only help if your server serves them. Point your server at the .gz / .br files:

nginx

gzip_static on;
brotli_static on;   # requires the ngx_brotli module

Apache

# Serve .br to Brotli-capable browsers
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} br
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.br -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.br [L]

# Serve .gz to Gzip-capable browsers
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.gz [L]

Caddy / GitHub Pages / Netlify / Cloudflare Pages

These serve pre-compressed files automatically – no configuration needed.