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How to Increase Maximum File Upload Size on WordPress

Have you ever felt that your WordPress upload size limits are too small? Some WordPress websites may have as small as 8 MB or lower for their default upload size limit. Small upload size limits may stop you from uploading large files, plugins, and themes. Particularly when you run a stock photo site or other media-heavy website, and you need to upload big-size media when the max upload limit size is smaller, then it will be an issue for you.

In this article, we will show you how to increase the maximum upload limit size in WordPress in several methods, however, you may want to check your upload limit size first to make sure if it’s enough for your file later.

Find Out the Current Maximum Upload Size of Your WordPress

From the Media Library

The quickest way to check your WordPress site’s current max upload size is by going to Media Library Add New from your WordPress dashboard, and the Maximum Upload File Size value will be displayed on that page.

Using Site Health Tool

Another option to find out your WordPress site’s current max upload size is through the Site Health tool which you can access from the Tool menu on your WordPress dashboard. Introduced in WordPress 5.2, this tool helps you to monitor and give valuable insight into your site’s health on the Status tab and you can find most of your server and WordPress configuration info on the Info tab.

To check the upload limit from the WordPress side, head to the Info tab and toggle open the Media Handling block then you can see the limit on Max size of an uploaded file.

And to check the max upload size limit from the server side, you can toggle open the Server block and find the Upload max filesize to get the information.

How to Increase Maximum File Upload Size on WordPress

Once you find out your site’s current Maximum Upload File Size and you think it’s not enough for your files, then you can try the solutions we will show you in this article.

There are some ways to increase the WordPress maximum upload size limit issue we will cover in this article:

  • Contact your hosting provider
  • Using a WordPress plugin
  • Modifying or creating the PHP.ini file and .user.ini file

Let’s start with the most straightforward way first to address the issue.

Method 1: Contact Your Hosting Provider

Reaching out to your hosting provider for assistance is one of the solutions we recommend. Not only it is one of the quickest ways to solve your issue with the max upload file size limit, but in fact, on the most hosting provider, reaching out to them is the only way to increase it as they configure it on a server level.

For example, at SiteGround the maximum upload file size limit is predefined at 256MB. If you are using a cloud server hosting plan and want to increase that limit, you need to request it from the SiteGround team by posting a support ticket.

Method 2: Using a WordPress Plugin

Another quick and easy method to increase the maximum upload file size limit on your WordPress site is by using a WordPress plugin. For the plugin, we use the Big File Uploads plugin by Infinite Uploads.

Big File Uploads allow you to increase the upload limit and bypass your hosting file size limit by seamlessly uploading the file in multiple smaller chunks from the client side. And you even can set the maximum file size limit for each user role with upload capabilities. The plugin is available for free on wordpress.org.

Once you decided to use the plugin, proceed to install and activate the plugin so you can start uploading big files on your WordPress sites!

To increase the maximum file size limit on your WordPress with the Big File Upload plugin, start by heading to Settings then open up the newly created menu the Big File Uploads menu.

Once you are inside the Big File Uploads page, you can see your default upload limit on the right side of the page, then change it to any size you want in Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB) format.

If you want to specify the limit for each user role, you can do so by toggling on the Customize by user role option that will bring out all the user role available on your WordPress site, then proceed to modify the limits as you wanted to for each user role.

Method 3: Modifying or Creating the php.ini file and .user.ini file

The last method requires you to have more control of your hosting than basic shared hosting which may prevent you to increase the max limit upload file size from the server side. Users of Virtual Private Server (VPS) or dedicated hosting services for example may have root access to their own virtual space which may give them more administrative access to the server.

There are two ways we will show you to increase the max limit upload from the server side:

  • By modifying the upload limit value on the php.ini file
  • By creating or modifying a .user.ini file

Increase Upload Limit on Main php.ini File

When PHP starts to run, it looks for the php.ini file and then loads it. The php.ini file contains the default configuration for running applications that require PHP. There are also some configurations in that file which we can modify its value to increase the maximum upload file size limit on WordPress.

The location of the main php.ini file varies greatly by the environment you’re running PHP with, so It’s difficult to guess the exact location of the file. To locate the current loaded php.ini file, you can create a .php file with the name phpinfo.php in your web root (public_html in most cases) folder and then load that file on your browser. The content of the PHP file is as follows:

<?php
  phpinfo();
?>

Once you created the file, try to load it on your browser with this URL format www.yourwebsite.com/phpinfo.php. And the information displayed on that page will look like this.

As you can see in the above image, our main php.ini configuration file is located at /opt/alt/php-ffpm74/usr/ folder.

Once you find yours, open the php.ini file to make some adjustments to increase your max upload limit. Find these three configurations then modify their value in this format.

  • memory_limit = 128M
  • post_max_size = 64M
  • upload_max_filesize = 32M

Generally speaking, the memory_limit should be larger than post_max_size and the post_max_size should be larger than upload_max_filesize. You can change the value as you want by following the format above. If you follow our limit value, then your WordPress upload limit will be 32MB.

Increase Upload Limit Using .user.ini File

You can also increase your site’s max limit upload file size by creating or modifying a .user.ini file on your web root (public_html in most cases) folder. A .user.ini file is a file that controls the PHP settings in a single directory. There are only certain directives allowed to use in this file, including the directives to configure the maximum upload limit size. The directives in .user.ini will override the main php.ini configurations, so if you want to give different max limits for each of your websites, feel free to create or modify the .user.ini file on each website web root.

To start increasing your website using a .user.ini file, log in to your hosting control panel then open up the file manager to get inside your website web root folder. Once you are in the folder, create a file and name it .user.ini then add these configurations to the file then save it.

memory_limit = 128M
post_max_size = 64M
upload_max_filesize = 32M

And if there is already a .user.ini file that exists, you just need to edit the file and add the above configuration to the file.

Similar to the php.ini configurations to increase the maximum upload limit, the memory_limit should be larger than post_max_size and the post_max_size should be larger than upload_max_filesize. You can change the value as you want by following the format above. If you follow our limit value, then your WordPress upload limit will be 32MB.

The Bottom Line

Small upload size limits may stop you from uploading large files, plugins, and themes. Particularly when you run a stock photo website or other media-heavy website, and you need to upload big-size media when the max upload limit size is smaller, then it will be an issue for you. Fortunately, there are ways to break that limit. This article shows you how to increase the maximum upload limit size in several ways that may help you solve your issue with the limit.

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Hendri Risman

Hendri Risman

Hendri is a WordPress expert and a writer staff at WPPagebuilders. He writes solutions on how to get things fixed in WordPress a lot. Mostly without involving a plugin.
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