Increase the PHP memory limit

If a page dies with:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted

PHP hit its memory ceiling. It usually shows up while resizing a large uploaded photo, importing location data, or running a plugin that processes many rows at once.

The quick fix

Add this to config.php, above the closing lines:

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

ShopClass raises PHP’s limit to that value at start-up. The default is 32M.

Two things worth knowing:

• It only applies to ShopClass, so nothing else on the server is affected.
• It only ever raises the limit. If PHP is already allowed more than the value you set, the setting is ignored rather than lowering it — so setting 128M on a host that already gives you 256M does nothing.

When that does not work

OSC_MEMORY_LIMIT calls ini_set(), and some hosts forbid it. Then you have to raise the limit where PHP itself is configured.

php.ini — if you can edit it:

memory_limit = 256M

.htaccess — on Apache with mod_php:

php_value memory_limit 256M

This causes a 500 error on hosts using PHP-FPM or CGI. If the site breaks immediately after adding it, remove the line.

Your control panel — cPanel, Plesk and most managed hosts expose a “Select PHP version” or “PHP settings” screen with memory_limit on it. This is the route that always works, because it edits the pool configuration directly.

Ask your host. On restrictive shared hosting this is the only route, and support will usually raise it on request.

Checking the current value

php oc-cli.php doctor

The report includes the effective memory limit alongside the other environment checks. From the admin panel, Tools → System info shows the same.

How much is enough

Site	Reasonable limit
Small, few photos	64M
Normal classifieds site	128M – 256M
Large imports, big images	512M

Raising it to 512M on a small site does not make anything faster — it only raises the ceiling before a runaway process is stopped. If you need far more than 256M for ordinary page views, something is wrong: a plugin loading every row into memory, or images being resized at their full original resolution.