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Here is my standard .htaccess file, any suggestions on how I can improve it with regards to page load speed? Would gZip instead of DEFLATE make any sort of difference?

ExpiresActive On
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

# Expires 1 month after file is first accessed
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpg A2592000
ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
ExpiresByType image/x-icon A2592000
ExpiresByType text/plain A2592000

# Expires 1 month after file is modified
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript M2592000
ExpiresByType text/css M2592000
ExpiresByType text/javascript M2592000
ExpiresByType text/html M2592000
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2 Answers 2

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Honestly, this looks OK, though you could clean it up a little bit.

You have two ways to make this code better:

  1. group related mime types.
  2. use human-readable syntax

Regarding point #2, here's part of the config I created after watching Illya Grigorik's presentation "Breaking the 1000ms Time to Glass Mobile Barrier":

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# these are known to be safe with MSIE 6
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml

# everything else may cause problems with MSIE 6
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript application/javascript application/ecmascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 15 minutes"

ExpiresByType text/html "access"
ExpiresByType application/json "access"

ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 week"
</IfModule>

You might also look into Google's mod_pagespeed for Apache.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Hello John, and welcome to Code Review! I've stumbled upon (and upvoted) a few of your answers since yesterday, and they're usually very good! It's always great to see new active members :). However, please avoid just posting a random dump of yours that seems related. In this case, you could simply have said "You have two ways to make this code better: 1/ group related mime types 2/ use this human-readable syntax". I believe such an answer would have been even more helpful than the current one. And again, thank you for your answers! \$\endgroup\$
    – Quentin Pradet
    May 15, 2013 at 8:05
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You can improve this code by removing unnecessary repetition. If you put a trailing slash after each declaration, then you do not need to repeat the same code over and over again. I would also suggest wrapping all the similar statements inside of IfModule checks: it only takes the server a fraction of a second, maybe less, to check if a module is installed; if it is not, it will skip straight past that section of the code. 

ExpiresActive On
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
    <IfModule mod_filter.c>
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain \
                          DEFLATE text/javascript \
                          DEFLATE text/html \
                          DEFLATE text/xml \
                          DEFLATE text/css \
                          DEFLATE application/xml \
                          DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml \
                          DEFLATE application/rss+xml \
                          DEFLATE application/javascript \
                          DEFLATE application/x-javascript 
    </IfModule>
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
    # Expires 1 month after file is first accessed
      ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000 \
                    image/jpg A2592000 \
                    image/gif A2592000 \
                    image/png A2592000 \
                    image/x-icon A2592000 \
                    text/plain A2592000 \

    # Expires 1 month after file is modified
      ExpiresByType application/x-javascript M2592000 \
                    text/css M2592000 \
                    text/javascript M2592000 \
                    text/html M2592000 \
</IfModule>

There honestly wouldn't be a noticeable difference between GZip & DEFLATE: the only difference is that GZip uses a checksum, header & footer which are also included. Hence a tiny bit slower, but more reliable and secure.

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