[RESOLVED] Wordpress Bulk Edit Leads to HTTP ERROR 414

Something odd came up in Wordpress and no amount of searching presented a real solution. When I Bulk Edited over 800+ posts and clicked “Update”, I would get a 414 error from the server. The exact error in Google Chrome was:

This page isn’t working
If the problem continues, contact the site owner.
HTTP ERROR 414

414 usually means the server is rejecting the command. The band-aid solution was to decrease the number of posts I was bulk editing at a time. Yes, bulk editing a handful of posts does work but knowing that this was a decently powerful server, I had to get to the bottom of this issue. Sometimes, ModSecurity settings could be the culprit as they are meant to be a protective layer to prevent the server from being overloaded and taken offline. So I opened up a chat session with a data center tech and had them monitor modsec logs. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The server rejecting the command is a resource using issue so after some testing, the tech added these lines to the pre_virtualhost_global.conf. If you are on a WHM server, just go to WHM >> Service Configuration >> Apache Configuration >. Include Editor and click on the drop-down menu under “Pre VirtualHost Include” and select “All Versions”. Add these lines:

LimitRequestLine 15000
LimitRequestFieldSize 15000

If your server is capable of running with this limit, this should solve your problem. After the addition of these lines, bulk editing 800+ posts worked perfectly. 

Note: One oddity was that these lines did not work at first. I had to add them, disable all plugins, then run bulk edit to kick start things. After that, even with all the plugins re-enabled, bulk editing 800+ posts worked again.

Why was I editing so many posts at once? I was making sure all articles had Pings disabled. Getting tired of all the spam pingbacks coming in!

Author
Ian Lee
Work from home dad, marketer and photographer. Fallen in love with basketball all over again as I coach my daughter's team.

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