Add htaccess rules to cache static content for webpage loading performance

[danreb]

Hi There,

We've just launch our first Grav website, upon checking the website through webpagetest.org to test loading performance it gives us a big RED F for caching. Coming from Drupal CMS background there's a htaccess rules that Drupal is using to work around with this. I copy pasted the htaccess rules and it fixes the problem. I am suggesting it to be added and be shipped with Grav htaccess files, following are the rules i've added

# Requires mod_expires to be enabled.
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  # Enable expirations.
  ExpiresActive On

  # Cache all files for 2 weeks after access (A).
  ExpiresDefault A1209600

  <FilesMatch \.php$>
    # Do not allow PHP scripts to be cached unless they explicitly send cache
    # headers themselves. Otherwise all scripts would have to overwrite the
    # headers set by mod_expires if they want another caching behavior. This may
    # fail if an error occurs early in the bootstrap process, and it may cause
    # problems if a non-Drupal PHP file is installed in a subdirectory.
    ExpiresActive Off
  </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

Regards,
Danreb

[flaviocopes]

Tested and works, while I'm not sure it's a good default for every site, as cache is something you enable only when deploying a site, not when developing for example, while our .htaccess contains just what's needed to run. And not everyone would need that maybe. Just tested that getgrav.org gets all A/B on that webpagetest.org test, but uses a CDN for assets so that line you propose is not needed to get an optimal performance for assets caching.

@rhukster can we add this commented in the htaccess, ready to be used, or should we add a "improving performance" section in the Learn docs with this and other suggestions?

[rhukster]

Yes this is something for the performance and optimization section of the documentation. Not something for the stock .htaccess file.

Will leave open to remind me to add.

[benblee]

Is this better set in a way that adds allowed filetypes instead of any file except .php?

I'm using this for fonts on http://www.smartgravity.com and image types could easily be added by the user.

<filesMatch "\.(eot|svg|ttf|woff|woff2)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
</filesMatch>