Failed to save error continues on site designs. Uh Oh!

[designwright]

Hi team, I have been expecting that with the new updates of Pro to 4.11 that the increased number of sections added on one page would not be a problem. I have three sites where this is still an issue. The one site is an existing site where the sections have not been added to. All we need do is edit the content and we get a failed to save. https://otter.run/ It’s only on the home page file and I have checked the PHP config as well.

On this site build, I cannot add any more sections to the page. https://faces.africa/highlight-videos/

Please can you help solve. Many thanks Rob

[prakash_s]

Hello Rob,

Thanks for writing to us.

It seems that there might be an issue of plugin conflict. I would suggest you troubleshoot with a few of the common issues before we investigate your settings.

1. Testing For Theme Related Issue
2. Testing For Plugin Conflict
3. Theme Update
4. Child Theme
5. Css/Js Customization
6. Increasing Php Memory Limit
7. Disabling Cache
8. Disabling Cdn
9. Permalinks
10. Version Compatibility

If none of those work, It would be best if you could copying your live website to your staging area. and send your details in a secure note so that we can investigate your setting without breaking your live site. Please provide the following details

• WordPress Login URL
• Admin level username and password
• FTP Details

You can find the Secure Note button at the bottom of your posts

Thanks

[tristup]

Hi Rob,

I have checked your site and found the Content Builder is loading the content of the pages. Can you please check by clearing all type of cache, and in private or incognito mode and let us know if you are still having the same issue.

Hope that helps.
Thanks

[designwright]

Hi Tristup, thank you for checking in. Unfortunately, the page won’t save. I tried incognito. No matter how simple the edit it gives an error and wont allow me to update the page details. Shucks this is a real challenge. My progress has slowed down considerably. It would seem that I cant add too many sections on one page, we are limited to the number of sections on a page. The Otter (otter.run) site was built late last year with the previous version of Pro and now with the new Pro the I am unable to edit the home page. We really need to sort this out, get to the bottom of why and get back on the horse, this past month has been disrupted by the same issue on three new sites.

Are we the only ones with this issue?

[designwright]

Hi, I requested advice regarding the recommended PHP memory limit of 512 MB from our ISP. Here below their response. I will do the test and see if this is the real problem.

[designwright]

Hi, I had our isp do a test and increase the memory to 512mb. I was then able to edit the front page of the Otter.run, albeit slowly, i was able to make a simple change and then save.

Their response

The issue I have now is that in order to move the website to a managed server the hosting costs will increase from just R149 to https://xneelo.co.za/managed-servers/ - R1295 per month. This is simply unaffordable and my concern is that two months ago we did not have this issue with the site.

[alexander]

Hi @robredwood,

I’m sorry you’re still having these issues. Needing 512MB is unusually high from what I’ve seen. I suspect that you’re just barely pushing over the limits on certain pages and needing 512mb ongoing is overkill for your site.
When Pro 4 was released we added Effects and Loopers. Effects increased the storage footprint of every element type, and Loopers increased the storage footprint of every Layout element type. I’ve been seeing performance bottlenecks like this on larger pages or those with deeply nested elements. We didn’t run into this problem in extensive beta testing, but after the version 4 release we’ve seen a growing number of cases where this performance issue is making it difficult to build larger pages.

I’ve identified a strategy that will help us reduce the size of the content, but regretfully it’s a bigger undertaking and hasn’t been something we’ve been able to release yet in the smaller followup cycle or point releases. It is important to us, and we will include it in a release as early as we possibly can.

From my testing, the heaviest part is when the server has to convert the data into JSON before storing it in the database. I downloaded your page and it saves on my machine with a peak memory usage of 72MB which is already a bit high because I have a few plugins active. I’ve seen better performance running PHP 8, so if that is an option for you it might be worth exploring while we’re working on improving the code performance.

[designwright]

Hi Alexander, I so appreciate you stepping in to advise. A few questions to help understand.
This wesite home page - https://otter.run/ has no effects or loopers. But, simply has both an instagram and yourtube feed. Are you saying this is not possible to do and this is the reason I can’t now edit the page. It would now appear that have too many sections on one page is a limitation? I am really stuck now as I cant edit the clients home page. Thanks Rob
ps: the isp cant provide PHP8 at this stage

[designwright]

Hi Alexander, I did a test on the home page by removing each section one by one until I had no sections left. The page still would not save. This surely indicates that something else is wrong?

[tristup]

Hi Rob,

I have checked a few pages and found it is saving correctly in your given site. And seems that you are checking in a different site, can you please share credentials for that too in the secure note.

Thanks

[ruenel]

Hello Rob,

I have logged in and installed WP File Manager on your site. I need the plugin so that I can edit your wp-config.php file to add the following:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

Without the code above, I would not be able to see the Fatal Error message which displays:

[14-Feb-2021 02:15:41 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1277952 bytes) in /usr/www/users/facesvwmwr/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 2022

The fatal error means that you have exhausted your PHP memory limit. In order to resolve the issue, I ended up adding this in your wp-config.php file as well:

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M' );
define( 'WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '728M' );

By default, WordPress will attempt to increase the memory allocated to PHP to 40MB (code is at the beginning of /wp-includes/default-constants.php) for single-site and 64MB for multisite, so the setting in wp-config.php should reflect something higher than 40MB or 64MB depending on your setup. Even if in your server settings you have set 512MB for the PHP memory limit, WordPress still caps it at around 40MB. That is why it is necessary to add those two lines to your config file.

Kindly check your page now and you will notice that I added a section “Added by X staff”. Please remove it afterward as I only added it to confirm to you that my changes were saved.

Best Regards.

[designwright]

Hi Ruenel, this is all very promising. I was able to add and edit this page you worked on. Going forward to resolve this on all three of my sites with the same problem.

I need to add the same code to the other sites:

1. Can you advise/guide how I can do this myself.
2. If the server only permist 128mb should the limit be set at this value?
   define( ‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘128M’ );
   define( ‘WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘128M’ );
3. Will it be a problem with the ISP to make it 512M?
4. I see you removed the WP File Manager plugin, is that what i should do.

This has been very helpful and now can see a solution going forward.

Thanks
Rob

[designwright]

@ruenel

wp-config.php fil

I copied the and implemented the same changes via the plugin to the Otter.run home page as was able to edit and save!!! Boom!!!

[marc_a]

Hi Rob,

We’re glad that the issue was already solved on your end with the help of my colleagues. If you have any other concerns regarding our theme features, feel free to reach us.

Thank you.