If you’ve stumbled across this page, it’s likely because you’ve come across an error message that simply said your site doesn’t have enough Memory – perhaps it’s running to slow, or not saving all of your changes, or a variety of things that are typical for an underpowered setup. Typically abbreviated to WP Memory Limit (or WP_MEMORY_LIMIT, the default WordPress Memory Limit is set at 40MB – extremely under-powered for most sites, and particularly a site that your business relies on.
Sure, he’s cute, but don’t let him fool you. Server hamsters are WAY more efficient.Luckily, this is a simple fix – all you’ll need is a text editor (like the default NotePad for Windows or TextEdit for Mac – Sublime Text if you want to run with the pros) and a way to log in to your server via FTP, such as Filezilla.
Six Steps to Increase WP_Memory_Limit
- Log into your server using your FTP client.
- Navigate to your WordPress install. You want the base directory, where you’ll see a file called
wp-config.php. This is the one you’ll need to edit – download it to your computer. - Open the downloaded version in your Text Editor (Note that Microsoft Word will not work – if you don’t have a program then you can use a free online tool like EditPad).
- Scroll down until you see the following text, which should sit on its own line:
/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */ - In the line just above that, we want to add some code where we determine the actual memory limit – 128MB is a good, solid start. The resulting lines will look like so:
define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '126M' ); /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */ - Save and upload the edited file, being sure you overwrite the regular
wp-config.php.
That’s it! Refresh and you should now notice marked improvement in certain areas. Keep in mind this isn’t a golden solution – your host may be putting caps on your service, so if you still experience issues after this tweak, it’s a good idea to reach out to them for some advice.