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ModPageSpeed 2.0: AVIF, WebP, and critical CSS — up to 69% less page weight on the live demo

Combine heads

HTML

Merges multiple <head> elements into one.

Filter combine_heads · Filter docs

A mod_pagespeed 1.15 filter. ModPageSpeed 2.0 applies it as part of one always-on pipeline, not as a separate switch.

Original Open in new tab
Optimized Open in new tab

Both frames render identically — that's the goal. The win is in the bytes and requests below, not the look. They're served live by mod_pagespeed 1.15 on demo-httpd-1.1.modpagespeed.com; the optimized frame applies only this filter. Right after a cache purge it may briefly match the original while the worker rewrites it — reload to see the result.

Measured impact

HTML size

232 B 219 B
−6%

What changed in the source

The page's HTML, before and after this filter. Red lines are removed, green lines are added. 


                
                  

                        <html>
                    

                          <head>
                    

                            <title>combine_heads example</title>
                    

                      +   
                    

                      +     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles/big.css">
                    

                          </head>
                    

                          <body>
                    

                            <div class="big">
                    

                              Hello, world!
                    

                            </div>
                    

                          </body>
                    

                      -   <head>
                    

                      -     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles/big.css">
                    

                      -   </head>
                    

                      +   
                    

                        </html>

Run this on your own site

This is one of 47 filters mod_pagespeed 1.15 applies in place — self-hosted on Apache, nginx, and IIS. Install and run it: it optimizes right away and adds an X-PageSpeed-Warn: unlicensed header until you license it. A commercial license is required for production use.

Download & run
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