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Leverage Browser Caching To Improve Site Speed

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The phrase “Leverage Browser Caching” actually means that different items on your site should have different expire times set. This is recommended by Google, and it will improve your overall Google Page Speed Score. If you have installed W3 Total Cache then you can check your site’s Page Speed score on your dashboard itself. We have shared lots of tips to improve website loading speed, and this is one of the simplest one.

Loading Time

Some tips to tweak your site’s speed

  • Use PHP Flush To Improve Site Loading Speed
  • HOW TO: Setup Google Analytics To Check Site Speed
  • HOW TO: Get Google Page Speed Report Via W3 Total Cache
  • 7 Free Best Tools To Check Website Loading Speed

How to Leverage Browser Caching

Find your .htaccess file, open it with any text editor (Notepad for instance) and add these codes below. Then save it.

## EXPIRES CACHING ##

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”
ExpiresDefault “access 2 days”


## EXPIRES CACHING ##

[Code Updated. If you still get an error, check this post]

What This Code Actually Does?

It will instruct the browser to cache different static resources like images, flash, PDF, JavaScript and icons for some specified period of time. You can also increase or decrease the values depending on your specific requirements. By configuring your web server to set caching headers for cacheable static resources, your site will appear to load much faster.

Do you know any other simple tips to improve site loading speed? Kindly share them in comments below.


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CEO and Founder of Slashsquare, Indian Blog Network and Web Consulting Media. HBB is a part of Slashsquare Network. I'm a Tech Blogger, Striving Entrepreneur, Atheist, and Proud Indian. Catch me on Facebook and Twitter.

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    40 Comments

    • sureshbabu

      I want to update my blogger code with Leverage browser caching
      Show how to fix

    • Piyush Golani

      Hello,

      Thanks for sharing this amazing tutorial. Buddy I’m facing lot of error and trying to fix everyday.

      Can you please give some quick suggestions. Here is my blog and it is hosted on blogspot platform (www.solvemyhow.com)

      Some common errors are,
      Optimized images, leverage catching problem, blocked js and css files etc.

      I tried to fix some but there are many. Can you please check.

      I want green color speed 😉

      Thanks,
      Piyush

      • Pradeep Kumar

        Do check these posts, implement and let us know the results mate. 🙂

        http://hellboundbloggers.com/2010/02/tools-for-optimizing-images-for-web-5268/

        http://hellboundbloggers.com/2010/02/tips-to-optimize-images-for-search-engines-5118/

    • mark ricky

      These are great tips for improving the speed of my blogs, thanks!

    • kuzzcorz

      ADD THIS

      ExpiresActive On
      ExpiresDefault A600
      ExpiresByType image/x-icon A2592000
      ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A604800
      ExpiresByType text/css A604800
      ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
      ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
      ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
      ExpiresByType image/jpg A2592000
      ExpiresByType text/plain A86400
      ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash A2592000
      ExpiresByType video/x-flv A2592000
      ExpiresByType application/pdf A2592000
      ExpiresByType text/html A600

    • Simon

      didn’t work for me, any other easier method to do these?
      or i am just to dumb?

    • 15 Ways to Speed Up Wordpress And Reduce Page Load Time | daPazze

      […] it is very much clear to any one that we need to speed up WordPress blogs or sites. But the million dollar question is how? In this article, I am going to show you […]

    • Hemant

      How can we do this in blogger?

    • Ayush Gupta

      Thanks. This is working for me. Thanks Pradeep bro

    • Damn

      I have tried this one for wp and it does work. but do you have any idea how to leverage browser cache for image in blogger/ picasa? since theys only let the files cached for only one day. thanks before.

    • One Price India

      Still experience this same issue for the past 3 months. Here is the forum post

      http://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-the-leverage-browser-caching

      Anyone can help this?

      • Vikram

        What's the issue? and which plugin you using W3TC or Super Cache? I managed to adjust the W3TC setting that too on Host gator and though my theme is not so good managed to get Google Pagespeed 95 and mobile 92 🙂 https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/#url=http_3A_2F_2Fwww.snakebytez.com_2F&mobile=false NO High or Medium priority Jobs 🙂

    • Vincent

      Use this instead if you are Hostgator:

      # Set Cache-Control and Expires headers
      <filesMatch "\\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf|mp3|mp4)$">
      Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, private"
      Header set Expires "Sun, 17 July 2011 20:00:00 GMT"
      </filesMatch>
      <filesMatch "\\.(css|css.gz)$">
      Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, private"
      </filesMatch>
      <filesMatch "\\.(js|js.gz)$">
      Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, private"
      </filesMatch>
      <filesMatch "\\.(xml|txt)$">
      Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, private, must-revalidate"
      </filesMatch>
      <filesMatch "\\.(html|htm)$">
      Header set Cache-Control "max-age=7200, private, must-revalidate"
      </filesMatch>

      # Turn off ETags
      FileETag None
      Header unset ETag

    • Ayush Gupta

      Thanks Pradeep bro. I was looking for this. BTW can you tell me How to get RANDOM Post thing same as WPBeginner having

    • Vikram

      I actually kind of figured out why this won't work on HostGator which is my Current ISP. I am using a shared Hosting and both "mod_headers" and "mod_expires" are disabled they said, so this won't work for me. http://www.ardamis.com/2010/07/17/sending-headers-to-leverage-browser-caching/ Tried both codes from this link in .htaccess and still not working.
      If you are using WP SuperCache then the above code in post will surely work for you.
      Even i got the "500 Internal error" when i tried using, then after i have to delete the .htaccess file and had to create a new one. Maybe W3TC will fix this in next update 🙂

    • barakuda

      didn't work for me, any other easier method to do these?

    • sudha

      If you set an expiry date or a maximum age in the HTTP headers for static resources, modern browsers will load previously downloaded static resources like images, css, javascript, pdf, swf etc. from local disks rather than over the network.

    • Chris

      Do you suggest me how to change the W3 total cache Leverage browser caching via its plugin settings?

      I am really confused in this regard. Will you please help me?

      • S.Pradeep Kumar

        Chris, I think you don't need to mess W3 Total Cache plugin for this.

        • Vikram

          I am using W3 Total Cache and i am on host gator. I used the code and i got Same 500 Internal error so i have to delete the code. How to remove the Leverage Browsing issue? https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/#url=http_3A_2F_2Fwww.snakebytez.com_2F&mobile=false
          How to fix this issue?

    • Randy Beaver

      I'm having the same issue as Deepanshu, any luck?

    • Azib

      How can I access .htacces file. I am using blogger CMS. Is there anyway I can leverage my blog on Blogspot

    • Satish

      Dude, this is really great man, it decreased my blog speed from 0.70 to 0.50 🙂 Thanks man 😀

    • Rohit Batra

      this looks like a good technique to reduce server loads..will try it..

    • Deepanshu

      i pasted this code. It shows 500 internal error 😕 so i removed it 🙄

      • S.Pradeep Kumar

        Fortunately it worked for us and some others, mind if you can share the code so that I can have a look. 🙂

        • Deepanshu

          # BEGIN WPSuperCache
          <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
          RewriteEngine On
          RewriteBase /
          AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*[^/]$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*//.*$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
          RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*=.*
          RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress_logged_in|wp-postpass_).*$
          RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Wap-Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
          RewriteCond %{HTTP:Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*(2.0 MMP|240×320|400X240|AvantGo|BlackBerry|Blazer|Cellphone|Danger|DoCoMo|Elaine/3.0|EudoraWeb|Googlebot-Mobile|hiptop|IEMobile|KYOCERA/WX310K|LG/U990|MIDP-2.|MMEF20|MOT-V|NetFront|Newt|Nintendo Wii|Nitro|Nokia|Opera Mini|Palm|PlayStation Portable|portalmmm|Proxinet|ProxiNet|SHARP-TQ-GX10|SHG-i900|Small|SonyEricsson|Symbian OS|SymbianOS|TS21i-10|UP.Browser|UP.Link|webOS|Windows CE|WinWAP|YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2|iPhone|iPod|Android|BlackBerry9530|LG-TU915 Obigo|LGE VX|webOS|Nokia5800).* [NC]
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} !^(w3c |w3c-|acs-|alav|alca|amoi|audi|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-|dang|doco|eric|hipt|htc_|inno|ipaq|ipod|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-|lg/u|maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|palm|pana|pant|phil|play|port|prox|qwap|sage|sams|sany|sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo|teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|wap-|wapa|wapi|wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda |xda-).* [NC]
          RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
          RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz -f
          RewriteRule ^(.*) "/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html.gz" [L]

          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*[^/]$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.*//.*$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
          RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*=.*
          RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress_logged_in|wp-postpass_).*$
          RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Wap-Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
          RewriteCond %{HTTP:Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*(2.0 MMP|240×320|400X240|AvantGo|BlackBerry|Blazer|Cellphone|Danger|DoCoMo|Elaine/3.0|EudoraWeb|Googlebot-Mobile|hiptop|IEMobile|KYOCERA/WX310K|LG/U990|MIDP-2.|MMEF20|MOT-V|NetFront|Newt|Nintendo Wii|Nitro|Nokia|Opera Mini|Palm|PlayStation Portable|portalmmm|Proxinet|ProxiNet|SHARP-TQ-GX10|SHG-i900|Small|SonyEricsson|Symbian OS|SymbianOS|TS21i-10|UP.Browser|UP.Link|webOS|Windows CE|WinWAP|YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2|iPhone|iPod|Android|BlackBerry9530|LG-TU915 Obigo|LGE VX|webOS|Nokia5800).* [NC]
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} !^(w3c |w3c-|acs-|alav|alca|amoi|audi|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-|dang|doco|eric|hipt|htc_|inno|ipaq|ipod|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-|lg/u|maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|palm|pana|pant|phil|play|port|prox|qwap|sage|sams|sany|sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo|teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|wap-|wapa|wapi|wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda |xda-).* [NC]
          RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html -f
          RewriteRule ^(.*) "/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html" [L]
          </IfModule>

          # END WPSuperCache

          # BEGIN WordPress
          <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
          RewriteRule ^index.php$ – [L]
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
          RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
          </IfModule>

          # END WordPress

          i tried pasting ur code at 2-3 diff locations but everytime it failed.plz help me .i m not gud at this 😕 thanks 🙂

        • michael belk

          S. Pradeep Kumar

          Sir I installed the code to my access file also, can you help me I received the following 500 error. Here is the code. Thanks

          [Tue Oct 04 07:52:56 2011] [error] [client 70.138.87.183] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/405.shtml
          [Tue Oct 04 07:52:57 2011] [error] [client 70.138.87.183] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/405.shtml
          [Tue Oct 04 07:52:57 2011] [error] [client 70.138.87.183] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/405.shtml
          [Tue Oct 04 07:52:59 2011] [error] [client 70.138.87.183] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/405.shtml
          [Tue Oct 04 07:52:59 2011] [error] [client 70.138.87.183] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/405.shtml
          [Tue Oct 04 07:53:00 2011] [error] [client 70.138.87.183] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/405.shtml
          [Tue Oct 04 07:53:00 2011] [error] [client 70.138.87.183] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/405.shtml
          [Tue Oct 04 07:53:03 2011] [warn] RewriteCond: NoCase option for non-regex pattern '-f' is not supported and will be ignored.
          [Tue Oct 04 07:53:03 2011] [warn] RewriteCond: NoCase option for non-regex pattern '-f' is not supported and will be ignored.
          [Tue Oct 04 07:53:03 2011] [warn] RewriteCond: NoCase option for non-regex pattern '-f' is not supported and will be ignored.
          [Tue Oct 04 07:53:06 2011] [warn] RewriteCond: NoCase option for non-regex pattern '-f' is not supported and will be ignored.
          [Tue Oct 04 07:53:07 2011] [warn] RewriteCond: NoCase option for non-regex pattern '-f' is not supported and will be ignored.
          [Tue Oct 04 07:53:07 2011] [warn] RewriteCond: NoCase option for non-regex pattern '-f' is not supported and will be ignored.

      • waleed

        Hi,
        If you just copied and pasted it you have to re-edit the code because there is some missing closing double quotation in line one.

        Also try to make sure you have placed the right opening and closing double quotations like " and "

    • Sam

      My site speed is bit low, I hope this way I can increase the speed. thanks for nice sharing.

    • Riya

      Great invention!! I too going to implement this code on my site to improve site speed.

    • nasif

      If i use cache plugin then still do i need to add these piece of code to .htaccess ?

    • Isha Singh

      From few months my blog load speed decreased and i was searching some trick to speed up the blog. will sure try to know how it works.

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