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This article is an introduction to Apache’s document expiration functionality provided by the mod_expires module. Setting expiration periods for web content enables web browsers to cache content for specific periods of time. As a result, you can reduce the number of HTTP requests that the web server must process, which helps improves web site speed and performance.

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Using the mod_expires module

Apache’s mod_expires module enables you to define expiration intervals for different types of content on your web site. For example, you could use mod_expires directives to instruct browsers to cache image files for one hour, JavaScript files for two weeks, and CSS files for two months. The following sample .htaccess configuration demonstrates how to do this: 
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
    ExpiresActive On
    ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 hour"
    ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 hour"
    ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 hour"
    ExpiresByType text/javascript "access 2 weeks"
    ExpiresByType text/css "access 2 months"
    ExpiresByType text/html "modification 4 hours"
    ExpiresDefault "access 2 days"
</IfModule>
In this example:
  • The ExpiresActive directive is set to On, which instructs Apache to generate Expires and Cache-Control HTTP response headers for the specified content types. Web browsers parse these HTTP response headers to determine how long to cache content on the client.
  • The ExpiresByType directives define the expiration periods for specific types of content. You can specify expiration periods in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. To define a specific type of content, use the MIME type, such as text/html or image/png. For a list of MIME types, please visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type.
    📘 Note There are actually two ways to define expiration periods. You can specify an expiration period from the time the browser accesses the file by using the access keyword. Alternatively, you can specify an expiration period from the time the file was last modified on the server by using the modification keyword.
  • The ExpiresDefault directive is an optional directive that specifies the expiration period for all other types of files not explicitly set in an ExpiresByType directive. In this example, any file that is not an image, JavaScript, or CSS file expires in two days.
To verify your expiration settings in the .htaccess file are working correctly, you can examine the raw HTTP headers sent between the browser and web server. (To do this, use a browser plugin that displays the raw headers such as Live HTTP headers for Mozilla Firefox, or the Developer Tools feature in Google Chrome.) When content is marked for expiration, Apache adds the following lines to the HTTP response header (the exact values will vary based on your own.htaccess settings):
Cache-Control: max-age=86400
Expires: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 19:02:30 GMT

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More information

For more information about the mod_expires module, please visit https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_expires.html.