Speed up your site with Caching and cache-control

Caching with .htaccess and Apache will take your website and your web skills to the next level. This is some technical and advanced methods condensed to simple htaccess code examples for you. But you must take the time to understand caching with cache-control and other headers and HTTP options before you implement on a production server.

Caching with both mod_expires + mod_headers
# 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

# 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

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0

# 1 YEAR
<FilesMatch "\.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$">
ExpiresDefault A9030400
</FilesMatch>

# 1 WEEK
<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
ExpiresDefault A604800
</FilesMatch>

# 3 HOUR
<FilesMatch "\.(txt|xml|js|css)$">
ExpiresDefault A10800"
</FilesMatch>