Skip to main content

IT Guide

GIPS Lite and Pro are a Single Page Application that runs entirely within your customer's browser once their browser has downloaded all the files. Therefore, all that is needed is a web server that returns static files to the customer. Examples include Apache HTTP, nginx, and IIS.

Prefer not to host it yourself? PowerGEM can host your heat map for you.

Cache configuration — required

All files in GIPS are known in HTTP as static resources, which means once a browser downloads a file it will not be re-downloaded. This behavior must be overridden so that when GIPS or the WClusterTrLimSumJson.json file that TARA generates is updated, the user's browser gets the latest. This is controlled by the HTTP Cache-Control and ETag response headers.

HTTP Configure Caching — required

Add the Cache-Control response header with the value no-cache, and always generate and return the ETag response header. This can be done for all files returned by the web server, but at a minimum must be done for index.html and WClusterTrLimSumJson.json.

Compression — optional

The browser and server can negotiate to compress files on the wire without need to configure GIPS itself. This is done via the Content-Encoding HTTP response header. Compressing files, especially the WClusterTrLimSumJson.json file can have a dramatic performance benefit.

Configure your web server — optional

Add the Content-Encoding response header with either the gzip or br values. Use the value (s) that are supported by your server. This can be done for all files returned by the web server, but is most beneficial for .js and .json files, especially the WClusterTrLimSumJson.json file.