Increase WordPress Upload Limit on BlueHost

I was moving a client’s site from an old host to an up-to-date WordPress install on Bluehost and I hit the upload limit.

On the old site, I used Tools > Export to get the content, which gave me a 10MB xml file. When I went to Tools > Import on the new site, it had a max of 2MB.

I found this post on how to increase the upload size with the .htaccess file, but it didn’t seem to work for me. But, it did lead me to the solution:

  • Log into your Bluehost Control Panel, and under Find type “PHP”. Click on “PHP Config”
  • Click the big button in the middle of the page that says “Install PHP.INI Master File”. That will add php.ini.default in your public_html folder
  • Open your html editor, connect to your server, and open php.ini.default. Copy all the contents, then make a new file called php.ini and paste it in there.
  • Search for the following variables and change them to these values:
    • memory_limit = 34
    • post_max_size = 33
    • upload_max_filesize = 32
    • max_execution_time = 600

That will increase your max file upload size to 32MB. If you’re just using this to import your content, I’d recommend deleting the php.ini file afterwards, resetting the upload limit back to the default.

Bill Erickson

Bill Erickson is the co-founder and lead developer at CultivateWP, a WordPress agency focusing on high performance sites for web publishers.

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Comments

  1. Eliana Tardio says

    thanks for your help. this is the best explanation on how to do it. I’ve contacted bluehost support more than 3 times and they didn’t know why I wasn’t able to find the php.ini Here, I realized I had to create it first.