UNIX tar.gz a directory via ssh

UNIX>tar.gz

//source: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/93139/can-i-zip-an-entire-folder-using-gzip
//In order to "zip" a directory, the correct command would be
tar -zcvf archive.tar.gz directory/ 

//This will tell tar to c (create) an archive from the files in directory (tar is recursive by default), 
//compress it using the z (gzip) algorithm, store the output as a f (file) named archive.tar.gz, 
//and v (verbosely) list all the files it adds to the archive.

//To decompress and unpack the archive into the current directory you would use
tar -zxvf archive.tar.gz