By default there is a restriction of 2 Megabytes file upload at a time for PHP. For large files uploading we need to change some settings in php.ini.

• Locate the php.ini file in the folder your upload script resides in.
• In the php.ini file, locate and modify the line called ‘upload_max_filesize = 2M’

The php.ini file contains all the configuration settings for PHP. These can be overridden by directives in apache .htaccess files or even with in the scripts themselves but for the moment let’s just concentrate on the ini file.

This file contains the following settings that we need to modify according to our needs.

• file_uploads
• upload_max_filesize
• max_input_time
• memory_limit
• max_execution_time
• post_max_size

It’s important to realize that upload_max_filesize is the sum of the sizes of all the files that you are uploading. post_max_size is the upload_max_filesize plus the sum of the lengths of all the other fields in the form plus any mime headers that the encoder might include.

memory_limit
When the PHP engine is handling an incoming POST it needs to keep some of the incoming data in memory. Setting too high a value can be very dangerous because if several uploads are being handled concurrently all available memory will be used up and other unrelated scripts that consume a lot of memory might effect the whole server as well.

max_execution_time and max_input_time
These settings define the maximum life time of the script and the time that the script should spend in accepting input. If several mega bytes of data are being transfered max_input_time should be reasonably high. You can override the setting in the ini file for max_input_time by calling the set_time_limit() function in your scripts.

While working with uploading in PHP, consider above settings and options in mind and use these very carefully.