To create a better user experience and improve SEO performance, faster page loading speed is obligatory. While you may feel the importance of this, you may not be sure how to increase page loading speed. Keeping that in mind, we will show you how to increase page speed using Htaccess.
Page loading speed is important to ensure better performance and user experience. There are plenty of ways to increase page loading speed for your website. Using plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket can make your web pages load faster. However, this can easily be done by adding some code in the .htaccess file rather than installing a third-party plugin.
Prerequisites – Optimize your website using the Htaccess file
Before we start the process, we would suggest carefully considering the following prerequisites to optimize your website using the .htaccess file.
- Make a backup of your entire WordPress using the .htaccess file.
- Disable all the caching plugins. Clear all caches created by such plugins.
- Check and refresh your website to see it is perfectly working.
- Now, open and edit WordPress htaccess file.
- Finally, test your website either on Pingdom or GTmetrix.
Backup Before Increase Page Speed using Htaccess
Before you edit the .htaccess file, you should create a backup of it. If anything goes wrong, you will get an Error 500 and the whole site may go down as it is a server configuration file. If there is a backup of the .htaccess file, you can quickly revert back to the most recent state of your website.
To create a backup of the .htaccess file, follow these steps –
- Locate the .htaccess file in the public route of your website.
- You can save it to any preferable format. But, it is better to save it as a text file like – htaccess-backup-{date}.txt
Note that the .htaccess file starts with a period and may refer to as a “hidden” file. At the time you are renaming it, be sure to delete that advance period and save it as a read-only file that can be easily opened with Notepad.
Once you make a backup of the .htaccess file, let’s take a look at the basic list of the Htaccess prerequisite files –
- Enable Compression
- Enable Keep Alive
- Leverage Browser Caching
- Disable Image Hotlinking
- Activate mod_pagespeed
- Enable LightSpeed Server Cache
Enable Compression – A Common Htaccess Trick to Optimize Website Speed
GZIP is the best method of compression. And it is quite common as people tend to do it in this way when they start editing the .htaccess file for increasing page loading speed. You will be shocked to know –
“The size of HTML files, JavaScript, CSS files can be reduced from 60% to 80% using the GZIP compression method.”
The thing is, you have to enable GZIP or DEFLATE compression using Htaccess to increase page loading speed. First, we will enable GZIP that works on both Apache and Nginx servers. The code for GZIP is wrapped inside the –
| # START GZIP COMPRESSION mod_gzip_on Yes mod_gzip_dechunk Yes mod_gzip_item_include file .(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$ mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$ mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.* mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.* mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.* mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.* # END GZIP COMPRESSION |
You can also enable DEFLATE that only works on Apache servers. Just like GZIP, the code for DEFLATE is also wrapped inside the. And here’s how to enable DEFLATE compression on Apache –
| # START DEFLATE COMPRESSION AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE “application/atom+xml” “application/javascript” “application/json” “application/ld+json” “application/manifest+json” “application/rdf+xml” “application/rss+xml” “application/schema+json” “application/vnd.geo+json” “application/vnd.ms-fontobject” “application/x-font-ttf” “application/x-javascript” “application/x-web-app-manifest+json” “application/xhtml+xml” “application/xml” “font/eot” “font/opentype” “image/bmp” “image/svg+xml” “image/vnd.microsoft.icon” “image/x-icon” “text/cache-manifest” “text/css” “text/html” “text/javascript” “text/plain” “text/vcard” “text/vnd.rim.location.xloc” “text/vtt” “text/x-component” “text/x-cross-domain-policy” “text/xml” # END DEFLATE COMPRESSION |
If you want to verify everything is working properly, you should visit GiftOfSpeed GZIP Compression Testing Tool. This will suggest whether GZIP is enabled or not. It will also give an idea of how much the file size has been reduced.
Enable Keep-Alive – Increase Speed of WordPress Site Using Htaccess
A great way to speed up WordPress websites using Htaccess is by enabling Keep-Alive. To enable Keep-Alive on your server, you can insert the following “.htccess code” –
| # START ENABLE KEEP ALIVE Header set Connection keep-alive # END ENABLE KEEP ALIVE |
Once you enable Keep Alive, both the web browser and your server will download resources using a single connection. Luckily, Keep Alive remains enabled on most Apache servers. Again, if you are using NGINX server, keep Alive already remains active. Still, you can do this for a double-check. You should also read – 9 Best Free Blood Donation WordPress Themes in 2022
Leverage Browser Caching By Adding Expires Headers in Htaccess
Your browser will download static resources only once when you leverage browser caching. This will cache these resources locally. — As a result, the same version will be used again for repetitive views instead of downloading them again.
The terms and conditions for downloading static files may change periodically (you don’t want to download all types of files). That is why adding expires headers in the .htaccess file will let your browser know when to redownload a static file.
| # START ADD EXPIRES HEADERS # ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month” ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/svg+xml “access plus 1 month” ExpiresByType audio/ogg “access plus 1 year” ExpiresByType video/mp4 “access plus 1 year” ExpiresByType video/ogg “access plus 1 year” ExpiresByType video/webm “access plus 1 year” ExpiresByType application/atom+xml “access plus 1 hour” ExpiresByType application/rss+xml “access plus 1 hour” ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/javascript “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/x-component “access plus 1 month” ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month” ExpiresByType font/opentype “access plus 1 month” ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject “access plus 1 month” ExpiresByType application/x-font-ttf “access plus 1 month” ExpiresByType application/font-woff “access plus 1 month” ExpiresByType application/font-woff2 “access plus 1 month” ExpiresDefault “access 1 month” # END ADD EXPIRES HEADERS # |
Also, be sure to add a cache-control header after all these –
| # BEGIN ADD CACHE CONTROL HEADERS Header set Cache-Control “public” Header set Cache-Control “public” Header set Cache-Control “private” Header set Cache-Control “private, must-revalidate” # END ADD CACHE CONTROL HEADERS |
If you have successfully added Expires headers in Htaccess to leverage browser caching, you can check new page loading speed in either GTmetrix or PageSpeed Insights.
Disable Image Hotlinking – How to Optimize WordPress Site Speed
This is one most reasonable and logical steps to increase page loading speed. Why? Because it is pretty unfair to let other people load images on their websites from yours when they are not paying to host images. And this is what Image Hotlinking is all about.
Disabling image hotlinking is the very first thing you should do. Inserting the following code segment reduces server response time wordpress htaccess. But how does it disable image hotlinking? It blocks other sites from loading hotlinked files while giving no error. It is a good way to optimize images using htaccess.
| # START PREVENT IMAGE HOTLINKING RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?example.com(/.*)*$ [NC,OR] RewriteRule .(jpeg|JPEG|jpe|JPE|jpg|JPG|gif|GIF|png|PNG|mng|MNG)$ – [F] # END PREVENT IMAGE HOTLINKING |
| Note: Here we have used (http://(www.)?example.com). You should use your own website URL here. |
Activate mod_pagespeed – Speed Up WordPress Website Using Htaccess
This is a great technique when you are running Apache servers. This not only increases page speed but also optimizes your website. Google is the inventor of the Mod_pagespeed module which is more than enough to define its effectiveness.
Nowadays, a few hosting providers like SiteGround, GoDaddy, DreamHost support the Mod_pagespeed module by default. However, you can also activate mod_pagespeed to speed up your WordPress website using Htaccess.
To enable mod_pagespeed, you have to use the SSH under the control panel and add the following code to the .htaccess file –
| # TN – ENABLE MOD_PAGESPEED START # COMBINE CSS, COMPRESS IMAGES, REMOVE HTML WHITE SPACE AND COMMENTS ModPagespeed on ModPagespeedEnableFilters rewrite_css,combine_css ModPagespeedEnableFilters recompress_images ModPagespeedEnableFilters convert_png_to_jpeg,convert_jpeg_to_webp ModPagespeedEnableFilters collapse_whitespace,remove_comments # TN – ENABLE MOD_PAGESPEED END |
There are filters and customization options available for further customization for the mod_pagespeed module.
Enable LightSpeed Server Cache – Increase Page Speed using Htaccess
This step is not mandatory. It is effective for those who are using LightSpeed servers to run their websites. Enabling LightSpeed server-level caching will increase your web page loading speed significantly. All you have to do is to add the following Htaccess code –
| # TN – ENABLE LITESPEED CACHE START CacheEnable public RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^GET|HEAD$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sample.com|sample.net|sample.org [NC] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !login|admin|register|post|cron RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !nocache RewriteRule .* – [E=Cache-Control:max-age=300] # TN – ENABLE LITESPEED CACHE END |
Note:
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Conclusion
You will definitely notice a significant increase in web page loading speed. Before wrapping up, we would like to give you a bonus tip. Do you know?
Revealing your server information increase the chances of hack
That is why you need to hide the server signature. It is simple, just copy and paste the following codes in your Htaccess file –
| # START – TN Disable server signature # ServerSignature Off # END – TN Disable server signature # |
After successfully implementing all these tricks, compare your new page loading speed with the previous one by using Pingdom, GTmatrix, or any other tool. We can guarantee you will notice a significant improvement in web page loading speed after the comparison.
This brings us to the end of this discussion. We would like to know the percentage (%) change in your website loading time. Do let us know by leaving a comment below.
