Phil Erb

Mosher,

I’m assuming that you haven’t found a solution to this yet. I’m puzzled why the relatively small images from your phone are giving you a problem while larger images are not. In my experience with WP on 1&1 hosting, I’ve been able to upload images that are a 1 – 2MB and not much more than that, or I get the same error that you’ve seen.

I’ve been hosting multiple web sites with 1&1 for years and have been extremely happy with them, except for this issue. I’m not trying to upload HUGE images – so far just a little over 3MB.

However, I think that the issue may not be related specifically to the file size that we see, but also take into account other things about the image (type of compression, etc.). As you’ve mentioned, you’ve been able to upload some 3MB images without a problem, where as the ones from your phone are much smaller in size, but it’s likely that the phone uses some kind of odd compression on them. Similarly, it’s likely that the images from my camera, with are about the same as from yours, have some kind of different compression than yours do – that may be why I can’t upload my 3MB images.

This is made all the more annoying by the fact that on the GoDaddy hosting account I have – I can upload those same images without a problem. I say that’s more annoying because I have other reasons to not like GoDaddy and would prefer to keep my accounts with 1&1.

In comparing the 1&1 and GoDaddy configurations, the PHP memory_limit on GoDaddy is 64MB and on 1&1 is 40MB. I’ve found a 1&1 FAQ article stating that their shared hosts do not allocate more than 40MB, even if it is set different in php.ini, .htaccess, or otherwise. That article is at https://faq.1and1.com/scripting_languages_supported/php/9.html.

It’s been a while since I’ve researched the issue, but when I was doing some significant testing back in January, I seem to recall that it wasn’t just tied to the PHP memory_limit setting and 1&1’s 40MB limit, but that there was some other limit that was contributing to the issue. Unfortunately, I can’t remember off the top of my head what it was and can’t find my notes. However, I’m going to keep looking, as I’m determined to come up with a decent solution to this, as I want to move my primary domain back to 1&1.

If you are interested, the 1&1 Customer Advocate Team is at 1-866-258-5616. Unfortunately, they are only available by phone between the hours of 9am and 5pm EST and have no e-mail address, which is why I haven’t had a chance to contact them yet. They may have a European phone number and hours, but I was only sent the U.S. information.

I will keep you updated on my research and progress with 1&1. If you have any more information from your research, I would love to hear it.