If you’ve been using WordPress for a while now, you know that one of the most common errors you’ll see is the “Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size Exhausted” message. This is super alarming because instead of seeing your gorgeous site, you see this ugly white page with some confusing text on the screen. Never fear, the Divi Engine team is here to bail you out. We are going to talk about why you might see the “Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size Exhausted” error, but if you want to skip to the solution, click the button below.

What does “Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size Exhausted” mean?

The big clue here is in the message itself, it says that the “Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted”. Now for some of us that are newer might think “But hey, my computer has a ton of memory”, and this is a common misunderstanding and why this message can be confusing. What this message refers to is the memory that your web server with your hosting provider has provided for your site to run. This is often set to a very low number like 32 megabytes which can cause issues when doing things like uploading images or installing a new theme. When the PHP which powers WordPress runs into that memory limit on the server, it triggers this fatal error causing widespread panic, but don’t stress as there is a very easy fix to the issue.

How to check your PHP Memory Limit

Just head over to “Tools” > “Site Health” > “Info”

Once there scroll down to the “Server” section and there you will see the “PHP memory limit”. If this number is 64 or less, you will definitely need to increase the “PHP memory limit”.

Solution: “Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size Exhausted”

Once you’ve located the file and opened it in a text editor you will either need to modify a line of code that defines the amount of memory allocated to the PHP or add that line in.

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );

If you see the above line in the wp-config.php files, make sure that it is set to at least “256M”.

If you don’t see the line in this file, you’ll need to add it before the line that reads “/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */“

Make sure to save the file and that is it! Your WordPress install will now be much happier that it has more memory at its disposal.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this quick post solves your “Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size Exhausted” issue and sends you on your way to build an awesome site. Definitely check out our blog for more articles just like this one designed to help you build the best sites possible.