Viewing PHP settings using phpinfo()

PHP has many environmental variables that you are able to update as needed. For example, you may need to update your php memory_limit to prevent certain scripts from running out of memory. In order to change these values, you must first be able to see what they are. To do that, you will need to create a phpinfo page. A phpinfo page shows you all of your php environment settings.

A phpinfo page is simply a php page with the following code:

<? phpinfo(); ?>

If you're not familiar with how to create a php page, follow the steps below to create a phpinfo page using your File Manager:

1. Log into your cPanel
2. Open your file manager
3. Navigate to the directory you are working with. This is important because each folder can actually be set to have different php settings. In this example, we are viewing the php settings for our main domain, se we are navigating to the public_html folder.
4. In the top menu, click "New File"
5. When prompted for the file name, enter phpinfo.php (it can actually be named anything, phpinfo.php is simply a common name for the file)
6. Find the phpinfo.php file in your list of files (it should have automatically updated). Right click on it and choose "Edit". If you see a "Text Editor" prompt, choose "utf-8" from the drop down list and then click "Edit".
7. Enter the following text
   <? phpinfo(); ?>
   and then click "Save Changes"

You can now access this page from your browser. If you created the file in your public_html folder, then you would visit http://YourDomain.com/phpinfo.php. The results should look similar to the below screenshot:

To find the specific value of a setting, search the page for what you're looking for. In this case, we used our browser's search feature ( Ctrl + f ) and searched for memory_limit. The first value you see is what is set for the current direcotry (local value), and the setting value is the master value. The local value is the actual setting and is the important value, because the local values will override the master value:

                            

Please note that your phpinfo page has many php settings that you don't want to broadcast to the world. When you're finished using the file, be sure to delete it. Another route you can take instead of deleting it however is naming the file something other than phpinfo.php. As phpinfo.php is such a common name, 'bots' on the web will randomly search for files named phpinfo.php. Setting the file name to something like 9823592374823.php would never be guessed by a bot (so no one would ever find it) however it may be difficult for you to remeber this in the future.