WordPress Default Memory Limit Increased for SiteGround Customers
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 6:57 am
At SiteGround, we always try to go the extra mile for the benefit of our clients and make website management on our platform as easy and hassle-free as possible. Especially for WordPress websites, being one of the first web hosts to start offering managed WordPress services to save you tons of manual work and hassle. The extra effort we put into it is constant over the years, complemented by a strong involvement of our team in WordPress development and hosting projects.
More and more customers are asking us to increase the default WordPress memory limits, a request reinforced by a new discussion within the WordPress community about increasing the software’s default memory limit, as the current values are old and no longer relevant today. Being the resource efficiency geeks that we are, we decided to increase the platform-level defaults and offer a global solution for all WordPress users on our hosting.
Why is a WP memory limits update necessary?
The WordPress ecosystem, including WordPress themes, plugins, and japan whatsapp number data the software itself, is constantly evolving and growing, and with it the need for more resources. WordPress site builders, online store management, e-learning management, etc. become more complex and heavy over time, requiring more resources to function properly. If you have a low memory setting, this can lead to issues with saving your page (as WordPress does not have enough memory to save the page content to the database). This can also be a cause of critical error messages or out of memory errors on your WordPress site.
The current default WordPress memory limits are 40MB for WP and 64MB for WPMU, while many new plugins and themes require a minimum of 128MB of memory to run properly, with most of them recommending 256MB if possible. We’ve always made sure to provide plenty of hosting resources for our customers, but unfortunately, the way your application’s default settings are configured to run plays a big role in how efficiently you’re using the resources we provide. For example, the current PHP memory limit on SiteGround servers is 768MB, so it definitely allows for a higher WP memory limit.
Currently, if you're using a heavier plugin and need a higher WordPress memory limit, you either have to specifically contact your hosting provider and request it, or you have to do it manually yourself. But it's a pain, even if you know what you're doing.
That’s why we decided to override the default WordPress memory setting for SiteGround customers, increasing it to 256M from the default 40M for WP and 64M for WPMU. Here’s how we did it:
All new WordPress installations on SiteGround now come with the highest memory limit
We started by including a new custom configuration file that automatically overrides and updates the default memory limit for all of our new WordPress installations via SiteGround's Site Tools. This way, all new WordPress instances on our servers get a head start right from the moment of installation. The same goes for all new WordPress transfers from other hosting companies to our servers, done with our free WordPress auto-migration plugin.
All existing WP instances will be gradually upgraded to the new defaults
The situation with our existing WordPress customers was a bit trickier to address, as we had to take into account that some of you may have already set a custom WordPress memory limit in your applications. Therefore, our solution will not override any custom WordPress memory limits you may have set yourself.
Since we always test, test twice, and then test some more before launching on a full scale, we've decided to start gradually updating only the default WordPress memory limit on a server-by-server basis to monitor and perform health checks for each.
NOTE: If you have manually installed WordPress on your account, and have not added it to your Site Tools, then our system has no way of knowing if you are using it, and your default WordPress limit will not be updated. You will need to do this manually, if necessary.
That’s why we highly recommend using our WordPress installer whenever you create new WordPress installations, or the automatic WordPress migrator when migrating an existing WordPress site to us. That way, you can take full advantage of our best-in-class managed WordPress hosting services and the many improvements we keep adding.
How can you check your WordPress memory limit?
To check the current WP memory limit for your installation, you can access the WP admin dashboard and go to Tools > Site Health . Then select “ Info ” and expand the “ WordPress Constants ” list . Look for WP_MEMORY_LIMIT and this is the memory limit for the website you want to check.
More and more customers are asking us to increase the default WordPress memory limits, a request reinforced by a new discussion within the WordPress community about increasing the software’s default memory limit, as the current values are old and no longer relevant today. Being the resource efficiency geeks that we are, we decided to increase the platform-level defaults and offer a global solution for all WordPress users on our hosting.
Why is a WP memory limits update necessary?
The WordPress ecosystem, including WordPress themes, plugins, and japan whatsapp number data the software itself, is constantly evolving and growing, and with it the need for more resources. WordPress site builders, online store management, e-learning management, etc. become more complex and heavy over time, requiring more resources to function properly. If you have a low memory setting, this can lead to issues with saving your page (as WordPress does not have enough memory to save the page content to the database). This can also be a cause of critical error messages or out of memory errors on your WordPress site.
The current default WordPress memory limits are 40MB for WP and 64MB for WPMU, while many new plugins and themes require a minimum of 128MB of memory to run properly, with most of them recommending 256MB if possible. We’ve always made sure to provide plenty of hosting resources for our customers, but unfortunately, the way your application’s default settings are configured to run plays a big role in how efficiently you’re using the resources we provide. For example, the current PHP memory limit on SiteGround servers is 768MB, so it definitely allows for a higher WP memory limit.
Currently, if you're using a heavier plugin and need a higher WordPress memory limit, you either have to specifically contact your hosting provider and request it, or you have to do it manually yourself. But it's a pain, even if you know what you're doing.
That’s why we decided to override the default WordPress memory setting for SiteGround customers, increasing it to 256M from the default 40M for WP and 64M for WPMU. Here’s how we did it:
All new WordPress installations on SiteGround now come with the highest memory limit
We started by including a new custom configuration file that automatically overrides and updates the default memory limit for all of our new WordPress installations via SiteGround's Site Tools. This way, all new WordPress instances on our servers get a head start right from the moment of installation. The same goes for all new WordPress transfers from other hosting companies to our servers, done with our free WordPress auto-migration plugin.
All existing WP instances will be gradually upgraded to the new defaults
The situation with our existing WordPress customers was a bit trickier to address, as we had to take into account that some of you may have already set a custom WordPress memory limit in your applications. Therefore, our solution will not override any custom WordPress memory limits you may have set yourself.
Since we always test, test twice, and then test some more before launching on a full scale, we've decided to start gradually updating only the default WordPress memory limit on a server-by-server basis to monitor and perform health checks for each.
NOTE: If you have manually installed WordPress on your account, and have not added it to your Site Tools, then our system has no way of knowing if you are using it, and your default WordPress limit will not be updated. You will need to do this manually, if necessary.
That’s why we highly recommend using our WordPress installer whenever you create new WordPress installations, or the automatic WordPress migrator when migrating an existing WordPress site to us. That way, you can take full advantage of our best-in-class managed WordPress hosting services and the many improvements we keep adding.
How can you check your WordPress memory limit?
To check the current WP memory limit for your installation, you can access the WP admin dashboard and go to Tools > Site Health . Then select “ Info ” and expand the “ WordPress Constants ” list . Look for WP_MEMORY_LIMIT and this is the memory limit for the website you want to check.