Force image to cache, but not text?

[Anon]

Ok, I've looked everywhere for this one, and it seems everybody wants to do the opposite: they have images that change, and they want to force them to load.

Well, I have an art history site. Once the images are uploaded, they almost never change. However, the metadata (decriptions, links, etc.) changes all the time.

Is there a way to cache images ONLY? That would save me tons of bandwidth, but still keep my text information up-to-date.

ANY help greatly appreciated,
Chris
www.the-athenaeum.org

[vsego]

I also always needed reload of images, not HTML. But, in your case I'd do exactly the same thing:

page.php:
<?php ...header() calls to prevent caching (check this in manual...

If images called from that page don't get cached (i.e. they "inherit" non-caching from main document), create simple script:

image.php:
<?php
...header() calls to force caching...
header("Content-type: image/gif"); // or jpeg or detect from extension
readfile($f);
?>

Call: <img src="image.php?f=image.gif">

If this doesn't work, there may be a dirty trick to solve this. Since "image.php?f=image.gif" is a GET call, it usually doesn't get cached. You might trick it with calling src="image.php" (which doesn't exist). Error hadling function will then get $f (which will be "image.php") and change extension to "gif" and then do the code above. So dirty I cannot believe ther is no nicer way. I hope that the above stuff will work, though.

Good luck!