Increasing your WordPress Memory Limit

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 effective.

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

  1. Log into your server using your FTP client.
  2. 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.
  3. 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).
  4. Scroll down until you see the following text, which should sit on its own line: /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
  5. 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. */
  6. 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.


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