Using FTP you can try increasing the memory for PHP and WordPress in several different ways:
1) You can edit the memory_limit line in your php.ini (if you have access to that file) to increase memory to 64M:
memory_limit = 64M;
2) Try adding the ‘define” line below in your wp-config.php file a few lines of white space below the opening <?php
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');
3) If those don’t work, try adding this line at the top of your .htaccess file:
php_value memory_limit 64M
If that doesn’t work or throws a “500 Internal Server Error”, delete the line from .htaccess.
If none of those work, your host probably doesn’t allow memory allocation overrides. You’re stuck with what they give.
I’ll give your suggestions a try. In the meantime, I’m trying to limit the size of the import by exporting only published posts – which still hits around 49M.
You may also need to increase php timeout limits. You also need to try splitting the WXR file. See WordPress WXR File Splitter (RSS XML)
The file splitter seems interesting, but I’m on a Mac.
Update 2: the memory define in config.php didn’t help.
Update 3: the memory limit in .htaccess throws a 500 error. Next step: ask host tech support for help.
