How to Increase the Menu Items Limit In WordPress

Have you reached the max items menu limit on WordPress? When you add more than a certain amount of menu items 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?

The reason that you can’t add any more menu items to your WordPress menus is because 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.

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 on 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 Menu Items 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

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 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**