How do I enable HTTP/2 in Nginx?
Change listen 443 ssl to listen 443 ssl http2 in the server block. HTTP/2 allows multiplexing (multiple requests over one connection), header compression, and is faster than HTTP/1.1. It requires SSL (HTTPS). Test with curl -I --http2 https://yourdomain.com.
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More FAQs in Nginx Performance Updates and Optimization Gzip, Caching, and Worker Tuning
Enable gzip compression (level 6, text types), cache static files for 1 year with immutable, use proxy_buffering to free Node.js, enable keep-alive connections (65s timeout, 32 upstream), use HTTP/2, set worker_processes auto with 2048 connections, and disable access logging for static files.
Brotli is a compression algorithm that's ~15-20% better than gzip for text content. Install libnginx-mod-http-brotli-filter, enable with brotli on and brotli_comp_level 6. Use it alongside or instead of gzip for better compression.
Add a location block matching static file extensions (js, css, png, jpg, etc.) with expires 1y, add_header Cache-Control 'public, immutable', and access_log off. React build files have hashed names so aggressive caching is safe new versions get new URLs.
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