How to disable caching with .htaccess

Quick .htaccess snippet to disable browser caching by modifying Cache-Control, Pragma, and Expires headers. Strictly plug-n-play.

Just add the following directives to your site’s root .htaccess file:

# DISABLE CACHING

Header set Cache-Control "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"
Header set Pragma "no-cache"
Header set Expires 0

No editing is required. I use this technique on several of my sites and it works like a charm. You can verify that it works using any number of freely available online tools, and/or any browser extension that displays header/server response.

Updates

Update #1: Here is another line that you can play with:

Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"

Update #2: Here is another technique for caching static resources while optimizing performance (You can customize the list of file types to suit your specific needs)

ExpiresActive Off


FileETag None
Header unset ETag
Header unset Pragma
Header unset Cache-Control
Header unset Last-Modified
Header set Pragma "no-cache"
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"
Header set Expires "Mon, 10 Apr 1972 00:00:00 GMT"