Hello,
Gezzz. . . I thought I followed the steps correctly to enable .htaccess, but it's not enabling (I test it on Google PageSpeed Insights and also by uploading a changed jpg image).
If anyone has any ideas to share, it sure would be appreciated. Here are the steps I took:

1.) My .htaccess file has only the below content and is located in my document root directory with all of my website content:

## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
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 image/x-icon "access 1 year"
ExpiresDefault "access 1 month"
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##

2.) I disabled the apache default config file and have my own that handles my website content. In my sites-available config file located at /etc/apache2/sites-available/myvirtualhost.conf I inserted my document root location after AccessFileName and in the <Directory> tag, and I changed AllowOveride None to Override All below here:

* * *
# .htaccess file location
AccessFileName /documentRootDirectory/.htaccess

<Directory /documentRootDirectory/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
* * *

3.) And in my apache config file etc/apache2/apache2.conf I made no changes:
* * *
AccessFileName .htaccess

<Files ~ "^\.ht">
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
Satisfy all
</Files>

* * *

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

--Eric

Do you have "LoadModule expires_module modules/mod_expires.so" anywhere in your config? (or whatever the Debian variation is).

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

Thank you Stephen for the help. I'm definitely a server-side NB here, but I'm definitely learning.

I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 rather than Debian.

And, no, I don't have have any LoadModule expires directives in my virtual host config file: /etc/apache2/sites-available/myconfig.conf which is the file that overrides my document root contents directives, but in only my .htaccess file as above.

Should I also have LoadModule expires directives in virtual host config file to enable .htaccess? If so, are there instructions on how to write them?

Much thanks for the help.

Eric

Does your php_info() show that mod_expires is loaded? If it is, have you restarted apache after modifying your vhost file?

If not, you should probably search the web for: ubuntu apache php load mod_expires