Question

I’ve finally gotten a VPS hosting account set up this allows me to use mod_deflate and mod_header (of course). I’m attempting to make my site faster by YSlow’s guidelines which include gzipping (via mod_deflate) the pages and setting a long expire header.

What would the .htaccess code for this look like? I’ve seen various examples but I’m wondering what it would look like to fit those parameters.

For example

# Mod_deflate
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI .(?:exe|t?gz|zip|iso|tar|bz2|sit|rar|png|jpg|gif|jpeg|flv|swf)$ no-gzip dont-vary
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.[0678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</IfModule>

Answer 1

Strait from the html5 boilerplate

    <IfModule mod_deflate.c>


# force deflate for mangled headers 
# developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/pushing-beyond-gzipping/
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
  <IfModule mod_headers.c>
    SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
    RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
  </IfModule>
</IfModule>

# HTML, TXT, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, XML, HTC:
<IfModule filter_module>
  FilterDeclare   COMPRESS
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/html
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/css
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/plain
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/xml
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/x-component
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/javascript
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/json
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xml
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xhtml+xml
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/rss+xml
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/atom+xml
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/vnd.ms-fontobject
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $image/svg+xml
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/x-font-ttf
  FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $font/opentype
  FilterChain     COMPRESS
  FilterProtocol  COMPRESS  DEFLATE change=yes;byteranges=no
</IfModule>

<IfModule !mod_filter.c>
  # Legacy versions of Apache
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css application/json
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml application/xml text/x-component
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf font/opentype
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

and

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive on

# Perhaps better to whitelist expires rules? Perhaps.
  ExpiresDefault                          "access plus 1 month"

# cache.appcache needs re-requests in FF 3.6 (thx Remy ~Introducing HTML5)
  ExpiresByType text/cache-manifest       "access plus 0 seconds"



# Your document html
  ExpiresByType text/html                 "access plus 0 seconds"

# Data
  ExpiresByType text/xml                  "access plus 0 seconds"
  ExpiresByType application/xml           "access plus 0 seconds"
  ExpiresByType application/json          "access plus 0 seconds"

# RSS feed
  ExpiresByType application/rss+xml       "access plus 1 hour"

# Favicon (cannot be renamed)
  ExpiresByType image/x-icon              "access plus 1 week" 

# Media: images, video, audio
  ExpiresByType image/gif                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/png                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/jpg                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg                "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType video/ogg                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType audio/ogg                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType video/mp4                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType video/webm                "access plus 1 month"

# HTC files  (css3pie)
  ExpiresByType text/x-component          "access plus 1 month"

# Webfonts
  ExpiresByType font/truetype             "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType font/opentype             "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/x-font-woff   "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/svg+xml             "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 month"

# CSS and JavaScript
  ExpiresByType text/css                  "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType application/javascript    "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType text/javascript           "access plus 1 year"

  <IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header append Cache-Control "public"
  </IfModule>

</IfModule>

also in YSlow: remove etag:

# FileETag None is not enough for every server.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  Header unset ETag
</IfModule>


# Since we`re sending far-future expires, we don't need ETags for static content.
# developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags
FileETag None