The experimentalSPDY protocol originally developed by Google gave birth toHTTP/2. Enabling HTTP/2 will greatly improve website performance.

However, there are some prerequisites to enabling HTTP/2 for your website. In this article, I will show how to get HTTP/2 working on your site running on Apache webserver.

Prerequisites to Enabling HTTP/2

HTTPS

First, enable HTTPS for your site. Configure HTTPS for your website, if you do not already have the SSL certificate or useLet’s Encrypt which is an open-source SSL certificate.

Apache 2.4.24

Older versions of Apache do not support HTTP/2. You need to have Apache 2.4.24 and above. If you are using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, thenupgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

PHP FPM

By default, PHP runs on Apache via mod_php. According to Apache documentation,HTTP/2 is not compatible with Apache’s prefork multi-processing module. Moreover, prefork is not most people favourite now. A switch to a modern module is better.

Therefore, switch to php7.x-fpm from mod_php. Run the following commands to effect the necessary changes.

sudo apt-get install php7.2-fmsudo a2enmod proxy_fcgisudo e2enconf php7.2-fpmsudo a2dismod php7.2sudo a2dismod mpm_preforksudo a2enmod mpm_eventsudo service apache2 restart

Enable HTTP/2 in Apache

Now, let’s enable mod_http2 module. Use the command below to enable mod_http2:

sudo a2enmod http2sudo service apache2 restart

Finally, enable HTTP/2 protocol by updating/etc/apache2/apache2.conf with the code below:

Protocols h2 http/1.1

Conclusion

Now you have successfully enabled HTTP/2 protocol in Apache. Test your configuration withLighthouse which powers the audit panel of Chrome Dev Tools or theonline test from KeyCDN.