[theme-reviewers] PHP Memory Limits?

Dion Hulse (dd32) wordpress at dd32.id.au
Mon Mar 19 23:29:19 UTC 2012


Unfortunately, out of memory issues can't be caught from within PHP.

WordPress does attempt to increase the default memory limit to 32M for
single sites, and 64M for multisite (I believe), while more intensive
things such as upgrades and image manipulation increases it to 256M.

There should be a few plugins related to this, but I can't see to spot
any right now.. (Other than Memory Bump which attempts to increase it
to 256M as a way to over come the 3.0 upgrade memory issues:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/memory-bump/ )
If your users need to increase the default memory allocation, they can
ask WordPress to attempt it, but they'll need to define the
WP_MEMORY_LIMIT define in their wp-config.php:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Increasing_memory_allocated_to_PHP

But yes, Memory usage is always increasing unfortunately, although,
some efforts are made to reduce the memory consumption, it's not
always possible, especially when many plugins are added to a site.

The move from PHP4 to PHP5 increased memory consumption, The move from
32bit to 64bit PHP installs also increases memory consumption, layer
WordPress on top of that, and the old configuration files which have
24M as the max memory that some hosts use are simply impossible (which
is why WordPress attempts to increase it to 32M).
For translated versions of WordPress, every additional string in the
interface adds a few more kB to the memory usage, a few more bytes
here and there for every additional hook/filter added, another few kB
for every extra feature and bug fix..

It's not going to be specific to themes (so wp-hackers might be better
location for discussion) but I'm sure you'll get plenty of the blame
of cause when someone installed a tonne of plugins then starts
fiddling with their theme and just knocks it over the limit


On 20 March 2012 10:12, Bruce Wampler <weavertheme at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey group -
>
> My theme, Weaver II, has a big admin interface. Recently, a few of my users
> that also seem to use a fair number of other plugins, as well, seem to be
> encountering PHP out-of-memory errors (seems to be at 32Meg PHP mem limit,
> which seems fairly common on shared hosts). While my interface is big, it
> isn't that much bigger than it was 3 or 4 months ago, so it seems to me
> there could be a slow overall memory usage creep happening with WP and other
> plugins.
>
> Unfortunately, out-of-memory doesn't seem to be caught anywhere in WP, so
> the users end up with a white screen.
>
> Upping the memory limit to 48M or 64M consistently fixes the issue.
>
> Just wonder if my theme is hitting a wall a bit ahead of others, or if
> anyone else has encountered this specific problem. Just seems that if true,
> there could be some dark clouds on the horizon.
>
> Bruce Wampler
>
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