How do I configure apache - that has not got mod_expires or mod_headers - to send expiry headers?

Question

The webserver hosting my website is not returning last-modified or expiry headers. I would like to rectify this to ensure my web content is cacheable.

I don't have access to the apache config files because the site is hosted on a shared environment that I have no control over. I can however make configurations via an .htaccess file. The server - apache 1.3 - is not configured with mod_expires or mod_headers and the company will not install these for me.

With these limitations in mind, what are my options?

Sorry for the post here. I recognise this question is not strictly a programming question, and more a sys admin question. When serverfault is public I'll make sure I direct questions of this nature there.

Answer 1

What sort of content? If static (HTML, images, CSS), then really the only way to attach headers is via the front-end webserver. I'm surprised the hosting company doesn't have mod_headers enabled, although they might not enable it for .htaccess. It's costing them more bandwidth and CPU (ie, money) to not cache.

If it's dynamic content, then you'll have control when generating the page. This will depend on your language; here's an example for PHP (it's from the PHP manual, and is a bad example, as it should also set the response code):

if (!headers_sent()) {
    header('Location: http://www.example.com/');
    exit;
}

Oh, and one thing about setting caching headers: don't set them for too long a duration, particularly for CSS and scripts. You may not think you want to change these, but you don't want a broken site while people still have the old content in their browsers. I would recommend maximum cache settings in the 4-8 hour range: good for a single user's session, or a work day, but not much more.