On a very few hosts, like GoDaddy, Hostgator and 1&1 basic plan, you can experience issues as Demo Content import failure, empty page content, skin not being saved, incomplete page rendering, etc. All these problems are caused by the fact that the base host plan of these hosts doesn’t meet the minimum Server Requirements to work with a modern WordPress theme. For example, the Memory Limit of these hosts is too low, approximately 40MB. In the official WordPress documentation is suggested at least to use 256MB, even if 128MB is sufficient to run Kalium Theme smoothly.
How to increase the limits
Most of the problems are caused by the WP Memory Limit. The WP Memory Limit is the maximum amount of memory (RAM) that your site can use at one time. When you reach your Memory Limit, you’ll encounter a fatal error. Several things consume memory, such as WordPress itself, the theme you’re using, and the plugins installed on your site. Basically, the more content and features you add to your site, the bigger your memory limit has to be.
You can increase/set any PHP parameter with GoDaddy create a new file named php.ini (if you already have php.ini edit the file) and add this line to that file. Wait a few minutes to take effect:
max_execution_time = 120 memory_limit = 128M post_max_size = 64M upload_max_filesize = 64M max_input_time = 60 max_input_vars = 3000
Note that this takes action if your hosting plan permits to increase values, please note that sometimes the host limit you and even if you update these values the modification does not take action. They are very strict with their memory limit and one of the few hosts that have such a low limit which causes this problem. In case please contact GoDaddy to increase the PHP memory limit.
- Follow the tutorial.
If you are using a different hosting provider, please search in google of how to increase server limit in your specific provider, and an official documentation article should appear.
Changing your PHP version
Consider using PHP 7, PHP 7.4 offers a significant improvement to speed and memory usage over past versions of PHP, it also comes with better error handling and many bug fixes. PHP 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 have reached the end of their life cycle and shouldn’t be used at all. PHP 7.4 will reach end of active support by the end of this year as well. While those versions should not be used, we do support them and they will work with our themes. However, since they have reached the end of their life, issues that may arise can only be fixed to a certain extent.
Here are the documentation links that will guide you how to change PHP version in some popular hosting providers from their Control Panel (cPanel):
Emailing your hosting provider
In cases where you cannot update the PHP version yourself, you need to contact your host about this. The upgrade process is an easy process and should be something your host can do for you without impacting your website or charging you a fee. Here’s a letter you can send to your hosting company:
Dear host,
I’m running Kalium theme on one of your servers and WordPress and this theme has recommended using at least PHP 7.4 or greater and MySQL 5.7 or greater OR MariaDB 10.3 or greater. WordPress, the content management system that my theme uses, has listed PHP 7.4 as the recommended version on their requirements page: https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/
Can you please let me know if my hosting supports PHP 7.4 or higher and how I can upgrade?
Also please increase those limits to a minimum as follows:
max_execution_time = 180
memory_limit = 128M
post_max_size = 64M
upload_max_filesize = 64M
max_input_time = 60
max_input_vars = 3000Looking forward to your reply.
Verify Your Current PHP Limits
You can verify your PHP configuration limits on Kalium theme by just going to your WordPress dashboard > Laborator > System Status.
Alternative method: You can also check your PHP configuration limits them by installing the FastDev plugin and then going to WordPress dashboard > Fastdev > and choose PHP tab to compare your server info (see example). The first column (Local) refers to your installation value, and the second column (Master) refers to the limits of your host. The latter values are often lower if you have selected a cheaper hosting package.