How to increase the Menu items limit in WordPress

Have you reached the max items menu/custom meta rows limit on WordPress? When you add more than a certain amount of menu items/custom meta rows do they just delete on saving? This tutorial will show you to increase this limit and explain what’s causing it.

Why can’t I add more Menu items/custom meta rows?

The reason that you can’t add any more menu items/custom rows to your WordPress menus is that of your server settings. There was a new php.ini option added called ‘max_input_vars’ in the PHP 5.3.9 update. ‘Max_input_vars’ controls the maximum amount of input variables. This is to help protect against denial of service attacks. Most servers will be set to 1000 ‘max_input_vars’, this is roughly around 90 menu items/45 post custom meta rows.

How to tell what your ‘max_input_vars’ value is?

The best way to tell what your max_input_vars is to create a phpinfo.php file and upload it to your server. The ‘phpinfo’ file will tell you what your PHP server settings are.

1. Create a file called phpinfo.php
2. Add this line of code into the phpinfo.php file <?php phpinfo(); ?>
3. Upload phpinfo.php to your server
4. Navigate to where you uploaded it on your server for example www.example.com/phpinfo.php
5. Scroll down to till you find max_input_vars and the number beside it is what your server will be set at.

**It’s good practice to delete this file after as you don’t want others to see it**

How to check your ‘max_input_vars’ limit with Woocommerce

Alternatively, if you have Woocommerce installed you can check by:

1. Logging to the WordPress admin section
2. Go to Woocommerce
3. Then click on system status
4. Scroll down until you see PHP Max Input Vars

Increasing your ‘max_input_vars’ value

The best way I’ve found to increase your ‘max_input_vars’ value is to:

1. Connect to your site via FTP or File Manager
2. Navigate to wp-admin folder
3. Create a file inside the wp-admin folder called php.ini
4. Add in this line: max_input_vars = 5000
5. Save

Also, you can use an easier way which pointed on the screenshot. Change your .htacces file:

Check to see if your ‘max_input_vars’ has changed

Finally, check to see it has worked and if you need to add more menu items/custom meta rows just increase the ‘max_input_vars’ value to whatever you need.

**It’s good practice to delete the phpinfo.php file after as you don’t want others to see it**

The original post