tar -zcvf packagename.tar.gz path_to_directory

I thought that was a good way to zip up directories and files recursively. Just to offer an alternative on the off chance that OP is looking for a way to save some space. Zipping everything into a single tar file will certainly save a lot more disk space than zipping them individually.

find path/ -type f -exec gzip {} \;

That's a good catch. I forgot about find will return directory names too.