Fixing a ‘fatal memory’ error

The problem

Sometimes when using various Content Management Systems (e.g. WordPress, Joomla, etc.), you may encounter errors stating that you have exceeded the PHP memory limit. You may have noticed this during diagnostics after your website faults.

An example of what the error may look like is:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 71 bytes) in /home/user/public_html/index.php on line 744

How to fix it

The above error is very simple to overcome. To correct it we recommend you follow the steps in our article on how to change your PHP limits. The most relevant component here is the memory_limit variable.

If you’re raised the memory_limit setting as high as it can go and you’re still running into the same or similar error. It’s possible that there is a problem with the website itself.