In need of help with setting individual static expires headers

Hi forum,

I have got a real headache going on about setting my expires headers.

I've successfully done all the basic configuration is my .htaccess

<IfModule mod_expires.c>

    ExpiresActive on
    ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"

  # CSS
    ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 year"

  # Data interchange
    ExpiresByType application/json "access plus 1 week”
    ExpiresByType application/xml "access plus 1 week”
    ExpiresByType text/xml "access plus 1 week”

  # Favicon (cannot be renamed!)
    ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year”

  # HTML components (HTCs)
    ExpiresByType text/x-component "access plus 1 month"

  # HTML
    ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 0 seconds"

  # JavaScript
    ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
   
  # Manifest files
    ExpiresByType application/x-web-app-manifest+json "access plus 1 week”
    ExpiresByType text/cache-manifest "access plus 1 week”

  # Media
    ExpiresByType audio/ogg "access plus 1 year”
    ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType video/mp4 "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType video/ogg "access plus 1 year”
    ExpiresByType video/webm "access plus 1 year”

  # Web feeds
    ExpiresByType application/atom+xml "access plus 1 day”
    ExpiresByType application/rss+xml "access plus 1 day”

  # Web fonts
    ExpiresByType application/font-woff "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType application/x-font-ttf "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType font/opentype "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 1 month"

</IfModule>

Code (markup):

All of this is working lovely. But my problem now lies in a few instances where resources aren't being covered by this code. GTmetrix can list the individual resources but I have no idea how to manually change the expire time.

I have spoken with dreamhost and they don't support

mod_expires

Code (markup):

which seems strange. I just don't know where to go from here.

From what I can tell I will need to go deeper into apache but I need to be given baby steps if this is the case. I am hoping your collective genius can guide me through.

Here are the following resources that need expires set:

• http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Ubuntu:400,700&subset=latin,latin-ext
• https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js
• http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
• http://p.twitter.com/f.gif?_=1383842094118&id=twitter-widget-0&lang=en&screen_name=aspirationalist&show_count=true&show_screen_name=false&size=m&twttr_variant=2.0&twttr_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lukecorden.com%2F&twttr_widget=1&twttr_hask=0&twttr_li=0&twttr_pid=
• https://twitter.com/i/jot?l=%7B%22_category_%22%3A%22tfw_client_event%22%2C%22language%22%3A%22en%22%2C%22client_version%22%3A%222.0%3Am%22%2C%22widget_origin%22%3A%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lukecorden.com%2F%22%2C%22format_version%22%3A1%2C%22dnt%22%3Afalse%2C%22triggered_on%22%3A1383842094217%2C%22event_namespace%22%3A%7B%22client%22%3A%22tfw%22%2C%22page%22%3A%22button%22%2C%22section%22%3A%22follow%22%2C%22action%22%3A%22impression%22%7D%7D
• http://cdn.api.twitter.com/1/users/show.json?screen_name=aspirationalist&callback=twttr.setFollowersCount
• https://oauth.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/js/core:rpc:shindig.random:shindig.sha1.js?c=2
• https://ssl.gstatic.com/accounts/o/868078097-postmessagerelay.js

Many, MANY, thanks in advance.

 

Hello,

You can't optimize google and twitter.
So, just disregard all the warnings related to the domains that you don't own.

 

Thanks for the reply. So just to be clear. These all of warnings are related to a plugin for wordpress with the exception of one

[http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Ubuntu:400,700&subset=latin,latin-ext]

which is related to the font used by my wordpress theme. Am I right in understanding that you are saying I cannot set expires for these elements?

 

You are welcome. Yes, you can't set expires for the domains that you don't have any control over their servers. You need to have an access to the server of fonts.googleapis.com to change its headers. You need to edit .htaccess file of fonts.googleapis.com. Can you do it? Most probably you can't.

Also it's not related to a plugin on your server. There is nothing to be fixed for your side. Only the owners or employees of googleapis.com can change its headers.
You can edit htaccess files of your own domains only.

 

OK, well that is excellent news. You've saved me a big headache. I've been trying to get my google PageSpeed/yslow score up to 100%. I'm really close. Last night I recorded 98/99 respectively. But this is the one element that is holding me back at the moment. I'll have to try and find another workaround to squeeze a little extra juice out of my site

I'm creating a series of tutorials for newbies and SEOs to follow so they can get an extra boost to their rankings by optimizing their sites this way and I'm also documenting my journey in the world of Internet Marketing to help others learn frm my mistakes. Feel free to stop by my blog and say hi. You can find me at http://www.lukecorden.com

thanks very much for your help with this.

LC

 

Your site didn't load for me. I have to give a "zero" score for its page speed

Only they can change those values. You can do nothing for external resources on your sites.
As a solution, you can always remove their files from your sites if page speed is very important for you.

In fact it's better to add less external resources to your sites. Because they will cause extra dns lookups even if they have proper expires headers. Also if their servers go down or if they stop hosting those files your pages might stop loading. If you have to use external resources, always try to add them to end of your html codes. So your pages may continue to load even if external resources don't load.

 

Good advice. Not sure why the site didn't load though? Perhaps the DNS was still propagating from setting up CLoudFlare. It's all good now.

 

I could load it through a proxy site. Nice site.

 

thanks mate. i have reduced cloudflares security settings to the lowest settings you should be able to view it without the need for a proxy! That is very odd. Thanks for the heads up I will have to get a few people to check it out. That's not ideal eh!

Glad you liked the site.

And thanks again for the advice. Much appreciated.

 

Hi luke i checked your site and is really neat. However comparing the GtMetrix score it takes actually long time to load.
check it out here if you may: http://gtmetrix.com/compare/fOr798WT/imNcLmFj
My home page ( http://www.arturoemilio.es ) although almost double the size or yours it take 3 times less to load (3.75 against 1.62 although sometimes came down to 1.25) .
Could you tell me if you are using a CDN? If so which one?
Also, are you using any caching plugin? Which one?

Hope to hear about. Regards!

 

Hi again, i've seen the report is missing. I can't edit the old one so here is a new comparison with luke's site.
I may help you if i anyone let me know about how luke set up his site.
http://gtmetrix.com/compare/imNcLmFj/zOnWfGQa

 

ALL CODES TESTED GOOD TRY THESE IF YOU HAVE WORDPRESS SITE

# BEGIN WPSuperCache
# END WPSuperCache

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

# END WordPress


# compress text, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and XML
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

# remove browser bugs
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
Header append Vary User-Agent

## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
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 text/html "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 1 month"
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/example\.com\/" [R=301,L]

Code (markup):