alex.rabe » memory_limit

Dear hoster : We need more memory !

Alex Rabe — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:24:50 +0000

A lot of people update to WordPress 2.8 and get the message :

Allowed memory size of 33554433 bytes exhausted

So, with WP2.8 we reached now the limit of many hosters (32MB), who is the bad boy ? Can we increase the limit ? I faced a similar problem here with my homepage and wrote a simple plugin for the WordPress dashboard which shows up the limit and current usage. Just for the notes, a WordPress 2.3 + NextGEN Gallery and 10 other plugins require 16.32 Mbyte memory.

Ok, what is the limit for a fresh WordPress 2.8 installation under PHP 4 and PHP 5 ?

My hoster support currently both version of PHP, interesting that PHP 5 require less memory (1 MB) . Now, what happen if you the include the german language (de_DE) file ?

I’m very surprised that the gettext() library need more memory under PHP5 (6.5 MB !). Finally I activated NextGEN Gallery and wordTube (plus the german language files) :

As you can see my limit of 36 Mbyte is reached with only two plugins, but the most memory is eaten with PHP5 and the gettext translation. I didn’t expect this. Every PHP version react different, what is your memory usage under WordPress ?

UPDATE : The reason for the higher memory consumption is found (THX to Heiko Rabe) : If you have a 64bit OS, then the memory consumption this more the twice as a 32bit OS. I’ve updated my test tool, see the attached screenshot (available since PHP 4.4.0 and PHP 5.0.5 )

You can download this test tool for the dashboard here :

Download WP-Memory-Usage
Release @ wordpress.org

More AJAX for NextGEN Gallery

Alex Rabe — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:01:03 +0000

When I review the questions in the forum , I can see that still the biggest problems is caused by the memory limit. It’s annoying that the create thumbnail process stopped or failed very often. I did my best to catch the problem, but as you can see from the 1&1 problem, I’m helpless when the script didn’t get the correct result from the web server.

For Version 1.00 I introduce a new AJAX based solution. Instead to process the thumbnail operation for all images via the PHP script ,I used a AJAX solution which submit each thumbnail step by step. This will ensure that the main script not suddenly stopped by a fatal error or warning. Here are some pro’s and con’s about my new solution :

Pro

A fatal error (memory_limit) will not break the main script
I can show up any error message as inline message
It will only in strange cases hit the “Max Script Execute Time”
Therefore I can combine different server intensive operation (thumbnails, resize, set watermark )

Contra

Require much more time
More database queries during the process

I uploaded this changes now to my GoogleCode project, if somebody is interested for testing , go and get the trunk code. It also contain now the new ImageMagick support (Thanks to the help of Frederic De Ranter). Please note that the trunk is fresh alpha build : not tested, not reviewed and nothing for a live blog system !

1 & 1 – Read the FAQ

Alex Rabe — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:41:02 +0000

In response to my article 1&1 = 3.

Marc found this interesting note in the FAQ section of 1 & 1 :

Can the memory usage limit be increased on shared hosting with a php.ini file?

Due to resource limits on our Shared Hosting machines, it is not possible to allocate more than 20M of memory to PHP, although phpinfo() may report a higher number. You will be unable to increase the memory usage limit with a php.ini file.

Very cool note Especially when you are check the memory limit via your PHP script. Time to change the hoster…