HTML - Cache control max age

html cache-control
Uli picture Uli · Jun 26, 2011 · Viewed 55.4k times · Source

I'ld like to present always the latest website content to the user but also have it fast loaded. By researching I came across postings people suggesting to use the cache for speeding up loading.

So what do I need to add to my website to "overwrite" the cache after 3 days to display the latest content?

Answer

james.garriss picture james.garriss · Jan 3, 2012

The Cache-Control header is used in HTTP 1.1 to control the behavior of caches. The max-age directive is used to specify (in seconds) the maximum age of the content before it becomes stale (i.e., the content will not change for some period of time). So if you know that your content will not change for 3 days, you want your server to add the following HTTP header:

Cache-Control: max-age=259200

(259200 = 60s x 60m x 24h x 3d)

To do that in PHP, add this line to your output:

header('Cache-Control: max-age=259200');

Read here for more info on the header function:

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