Enable HTTP/2 on Apache

Let’s enable the Apache HTTP/2 module:

sudo a2enmod http2

If you’ve been following my guide The Ultimate Web Server then you’ll already have an Apache Virtual Host file for your website. If not, replace the file name below with default-ssl.conf.

Open your website’s configuration file (replace ricbre.com with your domain name):

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ricbre.com-le-ssl.conf

Just below the <VirtualHost *:443> tag, type or copy/paste the following code:

Protocols h2 http/1.1

Then save ctrl + o, ENTER and exit nano ctrl + x.

To apply the changes, restart Apache web server:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Configure PHP Modules

We need to find what PHP version you’re running. Enter the following and take note of the result (mine is version 8.1):

php -v

Now we install the php-fpm module:

sudo apt-get install php-fpm

We need to disable mod_php, so enter the following but replace 8.1 with your PHP version:

sudo a2dismod php8.1

Enable the PHP-FPM mod but again, replace 8.1 with your version:

sudo a2enconf php8.1-fpm

Then we enable the proxy_fcgi mod:

sudo a2enmod proxy_fcgi

Enable MPM EVENT

By default, Apache will use the mpm_prefork which is not compatible with HTTP/2, so we need to replace it with the newer mpm_event module:

sudo a2dismod mpm_prefork

sudo a2enmod mpm_event

Then we restart Apache:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Test if HTTP/2 is Enabled

Let’s check if HTTP/2 was successfully enabled by using the curl command (replace ricbre.com with your domain name):

curl -I --http2 -s https://www.ricbre.com/ | grep HTTP