Is there a Wordpress Plugin to allow users to upload large files to my server space?

July 18, 2010 1:57 PM

Is there a plugin or easy bit of functionality that will allow a person to easily upload large files to my wordpress site?

I have my own server space using dreamhost. I use ftp software, obviously, but I'm working for someone who finds that kind of complicated. What I would love is some kind of AJAX plugin which would allow the person to easily locate the file on their computer, and then submit, and then maybe even give them some running upload status until it's submitted to my server space.

Does this plugin exist? I found one that I thought might work, called Uploadify, but I can't get it to actually work...

posted by visual mechanic to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Small files, yes. Big? Not so much: your server config probably has max upload file size set well below "large." (My WP installation won't let me upload large files, and I've got root on the damn thing. It's some Perl or Apache setting I've never bothered to find.)

I suggest an alternative filehosting solution, like Dropbox or something.
posted by goblinbox at 2:10 PM on July 18, 2010

Customize php.ini, or customize the entire PHP installation. The particular bits you're interested in involve "post_max_size" and "upload_max_filesize" which you can find details on here.

And pay attention to the red boxes with flashing text at top *grin*
posted by Su at 2:24 PM on July 18, 2010

I'm curious what "large" means for you. 2 megabytes? 20? 500?

In order, my suggestions:
1. Ask the other person to install Dropbox, then work in a shared directory. This is clean & simple.
2. You can have an upload form go to your Amazon S3 bucket. There's a plugin for the upload form.
3. The Dropbox add-ons page includes PHP Dropbox Uploader and others for this. This is likely to hit restrictions on your server - 2 megabytes is easy, 20 might be trickier, & 500 is pretty unlikely to work at all.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:02 PM on July 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oops, I left out a useful link or two: Dropbox (fixed link) & Dropbox add-ons.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:06 PM on July 18, 2010

To allow increases of filesize limits, there are 3 settings I know of. Two in Apache:

php_value upload_max_filesize 32M
php_value post_max_size 32M

And one in wp-config.php:

/** Increase max upload limit */
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '32MB');

Adjust that 32M limit as needed.
posted by artlung at 4:39 PM on July 20, 2010