Php – how to setup Apache’s Content-Encoding Header

Here's an ideal .htaccess that both compresses and sets sutiable expire headers.

# Insert filter
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

# Netscape 4.x has some problems...
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
# BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

# Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive On
  ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 seconds"
  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 2592000 seconds"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"
  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"
  ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"
  ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 2592000 seconds"
  ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"
  ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
  ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
  ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 600 seconds"
  ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml "access plus 600 seconds"
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  <FilesMatch "\\.(ico|jpe?g|png|gif|swf)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public"
  </FilesMatch>
  <FilesMatch "\\.(css)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
  </FilesMatch>
  <FilesMatch "\\.(js)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, private"
  </FilesMatch>
  <FilesMatch "\\.(x?html?|php)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "max-age=600, private, must-revalidate"
  </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  Header unset ETag
</IfModule>
FileETag None

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  Header unset Last-Modified
</IfModule>

The following article covers what it does and also talks about compression:

http://www.samaxes.com/2009/01/06/more-on-compressing-and-caching-your-site-with-htaccess/

Hope that helps.

The first issue is that you have the element with a directory from the file system...

This is from the Apache manual:

When to use <Location>. Use <Location> to apply directives to content that lives outside the filesystem. For content that lives in the filesystem, use <Directory> and <Files>. An exception is <Location />, which is an easy way to apply a configuration to the entire server.

When I setup mod_deflate on Apache I use this setup:

# --------------------------------------------------------
# Deflate Module Configuration
# --------------------------------------------------------
<IfModule deflate_module>
  # Set the location to webservers root
  <Location />
    # Insert the filters
    SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

    # Netscape 4.x has some problems
    BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
    # Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
    BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
    # MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
    BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

    # Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
    Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

    # Make sure to never zip binaries (ie6 and chrome has issues with this.)
    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|bz2|sit|rar)$ no-gzip dont-vary
    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.pdf$ no-gzip dont-vary
  </Location>

    # Enable mod_deflate logging by uncommenting these lines
    #DeflateFilterNote Input instream
    #DeflateFilterNote Output outstream
    #DeflateFilterNote Ratio ratio

    #LogFormat '"%r" %{outstream}n/%{instream}n (%{ratio}n%%)' deflate
    #CustomLog logs/deflate_log deflate 
</IfModule>