Importing, Max File Size error questions

I’m hoping someone here has encountered this issue and knows how to fix it.

I have two wordpress installations and I want to merge wordpress A into WordPress B. So I went in and exported WordPress A. It’s a 4.7M file.

When I go to Import that file into WordPress B, I get this error:

Sorry, there has been an error.

The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini.

So after looking around I contacted my host and they told me to make a custom copy of php.ini and change the file size.

I’ve done that.

Now my problem is, where do I upload php.ini in order for the Importing to work?

I have:

* added it to the root WP directory
* added it to the wp-admin directory
* added it to the wp-includes directory

Each time, no success. I get the same error message.

So I tried increasing the upload_max_filesize to way more than I thought I’d need (24M) and tried that.

No success.

I then found this link: https://www.bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?t=12440 and tried uploading php.ini to the following directories (leaving php.ini in all the directories): root, wp-admin, wp-admin > import, wp-includes, and even wp-content.

I also upped the “max post size”.

And I also tried another recommendation I read here on the forums by adding define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’); to my wp-config file.

So… what am I doing wrong, and how do I fix this? The two versions of wordpress are 2.6.3. Once I get them merged I plan to update to 2.84 but haven’t yet because of plugin compatibility.

Thanks so much!