Everyone need speedy websites. So people try to optimize the website to increase speed and performance.

And, one of the best option for Magento speed optimization is by .htaccess file. But, adding rules may find tricky for some users.

That’s why, we often get requests from our customers to set up “Magento speed optimization via .htaccess” file as part of our Technical Support Services.

Today, we’ll see how our Technical Team set up Speed Optimization in Magento via .htaccess and fix the related errors with it.

What is Magento .htaccess file ?

Magento is one of the widely used eCommerce platforms. Magento is designed for someone who not a developer. So it is a simple and very robust platform with high performance and allows customization too.

In addition, Magento’s ‘Performance and Speed Optimization’ feature is known worldwide. The speed optimization in Magento can be done by editing the file .htaccess.

Now, we will discuss tips on how to speed up Magento website performance with .htaccess file.

How to optimize Magento performance via .htaccess File

The default .htaccess file included with Magento contains several sections related to performance.

Let’s see how our Support Engineers optimize Magento performance via .htaccess File.

1. Gzip compression

One of the key values when coming to Magento optimization is Gzip compression. Gzip helps in compressing web pages and stylesheets before sending it to the user. Therefore, it will help to load the website faster.

In order to enable Gzip compression, our Support Engineers added the following code to .htaccess file.

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
    # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml

    # Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers)
    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
</IfModule>

2. Expire Headers

Yet another method make use of the Expire Headers.

Expire headers tell the browser if they should ask the server for a file or should take it from the browser’s cache.

To enable this, our Support Engineers add the following code to .htaccess file.

<ifModule mod_expires.c>
    ExpiresActive On
    ############################################
    ## Add default Expires header
    ## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#expires
    <FilesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
        ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
    </FilesMatch>
</ifModule>

3. PHP Settings

<IfModule mod_php5.c>
php_value memory_limit 512M
php_value max_execution_time 18000
php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off
php_flag session.auto_start off
php_flag suhosin.session.cryptua off
php_flag zend.ze1_compatibility_mode Off
</IfModule>

That explains the top tweaks that we do to improve Magento website performance.

Top 3 errors that can occur while implementing Magento speed optimization via .htaccess

From our experience in managing servers, we often see customers experiencing issues related to Magento speed optimization. Let’s have a look at top 3 reasons for such errors.

1.Wrong ownership and permissions

Often problems happen due to wrong ownership and permissions of the files. Usually, the files are created with certain default permissions and ownership. The wrong ownership other than “user” of the .htaccess may cause the settings to fail.

In such case, our Support Engineers check the permission and ownership by using backend command utility.

ls -la .htaccess

Then, we correct the ownership to the username and set up the permission as 755.

2. Incorrect Directories

Again, problems appear when there are some rules which don’t work with .htaccess file. It always works with the Apache config file.

Here, we verify the rules in .htaccess file and remove the rules which only work with the Apache config file. Then we assign this rules to the Apache config file.

3. Wrong rules

If the given code contain any syntax error, the code will not work properly. Similarly, the incorrect rule will not have any effect on the website’s performance too.

Furthermore, in all cases, we verify the rules in .htaccess file and remove the wrong rules from .htaccess file. And, the proper rules ensure that the website performance improves considerably.

[Having trouble while implementing Magento speed optimization via .htaccess? We can fix it for you.]

Conclusion

In short, Magento is one of the most widely-used eCommerce platforms. Also, “Magento speed optimization via .htaccess” is a quick way to increase website performance by adding certain rules to the.htaccess file. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers set up speed Optimization in Magento via .htaccess and fix the related errors with it.