Magento site speed optimization with htaccess

Now a days its most important to speed up your web site for getting more customer to visit it. If its taking more time to load then may be you could lost that customer.

Here i list few points regarding speed optimization of Magento web site with "htaccess" file :

=> Use Apache mod_expires and be sure to set how long files should be cached. You could use the below code for your Apache virtualhost config

<ifmodule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
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 application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
</ifmodule>

=> Adjust memory limit what ever you want :

## adjust memory limit
# php_value memory_limit 64M
php_value memory_limit 256M
php_value max_execution_time 18000

=> Enable Gzip Compression with htaccess as below :

<ifModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl|asp|html)$
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.*
</ifModule>

=> Use Apache mod_headers as below, add it in htaccess :

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
# YEAR
<FilesMatch "\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|flv|pdf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400"
</FilesMatch>
# WEEK
<FilesMatch "\.(js|css|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800"
</FilesMatch>
# 45 MIN
<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm|txt)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=86400"
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

=> Add mod_deflate as below :

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
############################################
## enable apache served files compression
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
# Insert filter on all content
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
# Insert filter on selected content types only
#AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript
# Netscape 4.x has some problems...
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
# Don't compress images
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
# Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</IfModule>