Enable gzip in Nginx without specifying the http directive is not allowed here "error

I have inherited a code base that requires gzip. I added these lines to the nginx staging.conf file (which shows up in two other places: / etc / nginx / sites-enabled / and / etc / nginx / sites-available /):

http {
    # enable gzip compression
    gzip             on;
    gzip_min_length  1100;
    gzip_buffers     4 32k;
    gzip_types       text/plain application/x-javascript text/xml text/css;
    gzip_vary        on;
    gzip_disable     "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";
    # end gzip configuration
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

But when I try to restart nginx it fails (without any error message) and running "sudo nginx" gives me this error: nginx: [emerg] "http" directive is not allowed here in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/staging.conf:37

This is the whole conf file:

# Myexample staging nginx setup. This is meant to be included in /etc/nginx/sites-available.

ssl_certificate      /home/django/myexample.io/conf/nginx/wildcard-ssl.crt;
ssl_certificate_key  /home/django/myexample.io/conf/nginx/wildcard-ssl.key;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_ciphers "EECDH+ECDSA+AESGCM EECDH+aRSA+AESGCM EECDH+ECDSA+SHA384 EECDH+ECDSA+SHA256 EECDH+aRSA+SHA384 EECDH+aRSA+SHA256 EECDH+aRSA+RC4 EECDH EDH+aRSA !RC4 !aNULL !eNULL !LOW !3DES !MD5 !EXP !PSK !SRP !DSS";

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name www.stagingpy.myexample.io;

    return 301 $scheme://stagingpy.myexample.io$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name stagingpy.myexample.io;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/myexample_access.log;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/myexample_error.log;

    location ^~ /apple-touch-icon { root /home/django/myexample.io/static/ico/; expires  1h; }
    location = /favicon.ico       { root /home/django/myexample.io/static/ico/; expires  1h; }
    location = /humans.txt        { root /home/django/myexample.io/static/txt/; expires  1h; }
    location = /robots.txt        { root /home/django/myexample.io/static/txt/; expires  1h; }
    location /static/             { root /home/django/myexample.io/           ; expires 30d; }

    location / {
        uwsgi_pass  unix:///var/run/uwsgi/app/staging/socket;
        include     uwsgi_params;
    }
}

http {
    # enable gzip compression
    gzip             on;
    gzip_min_length  1100;
    gzip_buffers     4 32k;
    gzip_types       text/plain application/x-javascript text/xml text/css;
    gzip_vary        on;
    gzip_disable     "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";
    # end gzip configuration
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

I tried to put the http block after the server blocks and before the server blocks, and I tried to put the server blocks in the http block, but none of these things worked. I get the same problem on my production server (the production.conf file looks pretty much the same except without the "stagingpy" subdomain). I have also tried to bring gzip-line from http bloc as a whole, and it has caused this error when you run "sudo nginx could": nginx: [emerg] "gzip" directive is duplicate in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/staging.conf:38

; however, I don't see any other gzip lines when I look at the file in this path.

Where should the http block be so that I can successfully restart nginx and enable gzip to compress the file?

Edit: I also tried to create a gzip.conf file in conf.d as shown here , but even after I removed the http block from the staging.conf file, I got an error stating that gzip is a duplicate ( nginx: [emerg] "gzip" directive is duplicate in /etc/nginx/conf.d/gzip.conf:1

). This makes me think that gzip is already in the conf file, but running find /etc/nginx/ -type f -name "*.conf" | grep gzip -n

it only gives me the gzip.conf file. According to some online gzip tests, the site has gzip, but others say it doesn't.