Cache-Control + mod_expires setup at .htaccess but leverage browser cache still do not work

Question

I've fine tuned the .htaccess file but could not make the Leveraged Browser Cache to work. GTMetrix tells me several .png and .svg images have no Expiration set. 1. Expires_module is enabled and running in Apache 2. Set Cache-Control and Enable Browser Cache are setup at the .htaccess. The .htaccess code is below. Any advice to make browser caching work is welcome. :-)

#Set Cache-Control
<FilesMatch ".(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|svg|js|css|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=84600, public"
#End Cache-Control
</FilesMatch>
#Enable browser cache
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive On

  # Images
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/webp "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year"

  # Video
  ExpiresByType video/mp4 "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType video/mpeg "access plus 1 year"

  # CSS, JavaScript
  ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 month"

  # Others
  ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 1 month"
</IfModule>
#End browser cache
#Enable HSTS

Answer 1

you need to ensure to Enable mod_expires on CentOS and Ubuntu,

Run following command on your CentOS system to see if Apache module mod_expires is enabled or not, It should show following output if enabled, otherwise you’ll see nothing in output.

httpd -M | grep expires

Another way to verify it is via httpd.conf file, open apache configuration file in your favorite text editor application (Vi/ViM, Nano etc) and search for following line. If successfully found, then your Apache has mod_expires enabled.

LoadModule expires_module modules/mod_expires.so

For Ubuntu system, we need to use a2enmod utility to enable Apache modules, simply run following command to enable expires module on Ubuntu.

sudo a2enmod expires

Once done, we need to restart apache for this change to take effect.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

or

sudo service apache2 restart

Then go to GTmetrics or Google PageSpeed and test your url for "Browser Leverage caching" and check if cache time is updated as per your entry in .htaccess