Speed up your site with .htaccess caching mod_expires and mod_headers

**david** · 09-06-2013, 03:46 AM

Browser cache is very important to speed up your site loading and here is how to speed up by mod_expires and mod_headers.

Before doing anything let 's make sure 2 of these mod are turned on. Here is how to turn on it on Ubuntu.

1. Enable mod_expires and mod_headers

Code:

sudo a2enmod headers
sudo a2enmod expires

Then restart apache to apply the change

Code:

sudo service apache2 restart

or

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

2. Add caching code for .htaccess file

Caching with both mod_expires + mod_headers

Code:

# Turn on Expires and set default to 0
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0
 
# Set up caching on media files for 1 year (forever?)
<FilesMatch "\.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$">
ExpiresDefault A29030400
Header append Cache-Control "public"
</FilesMatch>
 
# Set up caching on media files for 1 week
<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|swf)$">
ExpiresDefault A604800
Header append Cache-Control "public"
</FilesMatch>
 
# Set up 2 Hour caching on commonly updated files
<FilesMatch "\.(xml|txt|html|js|css)$">
ExpiresDefault A7200
Header append Cache-Control "proxy-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>
 
# Force no caching for dynamic files
<FilesMatch "\.(php|cgi|pl|htm)$">
ExpiresActive Off
Header set Cache-Control "private, no-cache, no-store, proxy-revalidate, no-transform"
Header set Pragma "no-cache"
</FilesMatch>

Caching with mod_headers

Code:

# 1 YEAR
<FilesMatch "\.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public"
</FilesMatch>
 
# 1 WEEK
<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
</FilesMatch>
 
# 3 HOUR
<FilesMatch "\.(txt|xml|js|css)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=10800"
</FilesMatch>
 
# NEVER CACHE
<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm|php|cgi|pl)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, private, no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>

Caching with mod_expires

Code:

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0
 
# 1 YEAR
<FilesMatch "\.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$">
ExpiresDefault A29030400
</FilesMatch>
 
# 1 WEEK
<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
ExpiresDefault A604800
</FilesMatch>
 
# 3 HOUR
<FilesMatch "\.(txt|xml|js|css)$">
ExpiresDefault A10800"
</FilesMatch>

And the last one is bonus. Here is list of time maybe you need to change expired time for your code

Code:

#      300   5 MIN
#      600  10 MIN
#      900  15 MIN
#     1800  30 MIN
#     2700  45 MIN
#     3600   1 HR
#     7200   2 HR
#    10800   3 HR
#    14400   4 HR
#    18000   5 HR
#    36000  10 HR
#    39600  11 HR
#    43200  12 HR
#    46800  13 HR
#    50400  14 HR
#    54000  15 HR
#    86400   1 DAY
#   172800   2 DAY
#   259200   3 DAY
#   345600   4 DAY
#   432000   5 DAY
#   518400   6 DAY
#   604800   1 WEEK
#  1209600   2 WEEK
#  1814400   3 WEEK
#  2419200   4 WEEK
#  4838400   2 MONTH
#  7257600   3 MONTH
#  9676800   4 MONTH
# 12096000   5 MONTH
# 14515200   6 MONTH
# 16934400   7 MONTH
# 19353600   8 MONTH
# 21772800   9 MONTH
# 24192000  10 MONTH
# 26611200  11 MONTH
# 29030400  12 MONTH

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**katejohn304** · 14-03-2019, 07:26 AM

This article demonstrates 2 wonderful approaches to actualize storing on your site utilizing Apache .htaccess (httpd.conf) records on the Apache Web Server. The two techniques are very easy to set up and will drastically accelerate your site!