PHP Memory Limit

If you see the PHP Memory Limit warning, this means your PHP Memory on your server is set to less than our recommended 512MB.

PHP Memory is used when your website is running processes, so if you do not have sufficient memory this can mean your website becomes unresponsive, or the WordPress admin screens can be very slow.

This can also be a cause for critical error messages,  or memory exhaused errors on your WordPress site.

How to increase PHP Memory Limit (Contact Host)

** RECOMMENDED **

If you’re not technical and are not familiar with hosting configuration files, you are best to contact your hosting company and ask them to increasey our PHP Memory limit.

You can send them a message like this:

All good hosting companies will be happy to increase this allowance for you. 

If this is not allowed, it’s likely you’re either using a sub-standard hosting company, or you are on a very cheap hosting plan.  We always recommend choosing a host that provides hosting suitable for business use – often cheaper hosting companies impose strict server limitations which make them only suitable for the most basic personal sites.

We recommend Siteground or Kinsta hosting for your business.

How to increase PHP Memory Limit (Manual)

If you want to increase the PHP Memory limit yourself, you can follow these steps.

Please remember that if you are not familiar with hosting config files, we strongly recommend contacting your hosting company, as you can break your site if you use the wrong settings here.  

Please also be aware that on some stricter hosting environments, adding these codes may not work, and you may still need to contact your host to do this for you.

Edit your PHP.ini file

The first place to try and increase your PHP Memory Limit is the PHP.ini file.  This is located in the root (main folder) of your site.  

If you’re using shared hosting, you will not be able to access your PHP.ini file, so see the next step below instead. If you do have access to PHP.ini, you’ll most likely find it in the root folder, but this could vary depending on your host.

To increase the PHP memory limit and upload limit, change the following lines in PHP.ini

memory_limit = 512M
upload_max_filesize = 12M
post_max_size = 13M
file_uploads = On
max_execution_time = 180

Edit your .htaccess file

If you’re on shared hosting and cannot access your PHP.ini file, the alternative process is to modify your .htaccess file. 

Your .htaccess file starts with a dot because it is a hidden file. If you don’t see it in your root folder, check to make sure that your SFTP file manager isn’t keeping those files hidden from view.

To increase the PHP memory, you’ll add the following to your .htaccess file:

php_value memory_limit 512M
php_value upload_max_filesize 12M
php_value post_max_size 13M

Increasing your WP Memory Limit

As part of increasing your PHP limit, you may also need to increase your WP Memory Limit.  All hosting companies will be able to do this for you – but you can also do this yourself following the steps below:

Step 1: Go to your site main folder where WordPress is installed and find the wp-config.php file

Step 2: Open this file and locate the  line ‘/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */’

Step 3: Paste this just above that text:

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );