Full On Design

Here is a really nifty trick I’ve been using for a while to decrease the time a page takes to load. Add the following lines of code to your .htaccess file:

FileETag none # Turn off eTags
<IfModule mod_expires.c> # Check that the expires module has been installed
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 years"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 10 years"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 10 years"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 10 years"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 10 years"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 10 years"
ExpiresByType application/x-unknown-content-type "access plus 10 years"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 10 years"
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_gzip.c>  # check if gZip support has been installed
mod_gzip_on         Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk    Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file          \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler       ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime      ^text\.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime      ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime      ^image\.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*
</IfModule>

This quick and easy method tells the user to cache files which are unlikely to change for 10 years (feel free to change the amount of time) and HTML for 1 second. It also turns off eTags.

Update: I also added a another piece of code I use which turns on Gzip, which reduces the amount of bandwidth required to transfer a file.