How to Increase WordPress Memory Limit

Below, we’ll feature four different methods you can try to increase the WordPress memory limit.

Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee that all of these solutions will work for you because it depends in large part on how your hosting environment is configured. That’s why we shared four different methods – at least one of these should work for your situation.

Because some of these fixes involve editing core WordPress files, we highly recommend that you take a backup of your site before proceeding.

Once you have a recent backup of your site, here are some ways to increase the WP memory limit.

Edit wp-config.php and increase wp_memory_limit

If you’re running low on memory, there’s a simple solution: increase the amount of memory you have access to! WordPress lets you set the current memory limit in its wp-config.php file via the wp_memory_limit variable. However, this limit may be less than the amount of memory provided with your hosting plan.

If this is the case, you may be able to resolve this error by editing your wp-config.php file. Making changes at the code level does carry a degree of risk, so it’s smart to create a backup of your site before proceeding.

To edit the wp-config.php file, you’ll need to connect to your server via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) using an FTP client such as FileZilla.

navigate to your site’s root folder and;

Inside this folder, right-click on the wp-config.php file, and select View/Edit. This opens wp-config.php in your default text editor. Now, search for the following phrase – WP_MEMORY_LIMIT.

It might look something like this:

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '32M' );

If this code already exists in your wp-config.php file, you need to increase the number. For example, you can increase it from 32M to 256M.

If you don’t see this line of code in the file, you’ll need to add it. Just add the following code above the line that says /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */:

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

There you go. There are many more ways to do this but I just wanted to share the method that worked for me.