Caching Techniques for Apache .htaccess Gurus

This article shows 2 awesome ways to implement caching on your website using Apache .htaccess (httpd.conf) files on the Apache Web Server. Both methods are extremely simple to set up and will dramatically speed up your site!

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Apache .htaccess caching code

# 1 YEAR

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public"

# 1 WEEK

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"

# 2 DAYS

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=172800, proxy-revalidate"

# 1 MIN

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=60, private, proxy-revalidate"

For fail-safe code implement this to the above

# any Expires Directives go here



# any Header directives go here

At least one of the 2 modules needs to be built into Apache; although they are included in the distribution, they are not turned on by default. To find out if the modules are enabled in your server, find the httpd binary and run httpd -l; this should print a list of the available modules. The modules we're looking for are mod_expires and mod_headers.

If they aren't available, and you have administrative access, you can recompile Apache to include them. This can be done either by uncommenting the appropriate lines in the Configuration file, or using the -enable-module=expires and -enable-module=headers arguments to configure (1.3 or greater).

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