500 Internal Server Error when updating htaccess

Question

I'm using a quiz plugin for WP which caused a 504 Gateway Timeout after adding too many questions.

The developer told me to update my .htaccess file with the following code:

php_value max_input_vars 5000
php_value suhosin.post.max_vars 5000
php_value suhosin.request.max_vars 5000

This is the .htaccess code before I added the 3 lines of code:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

And this is after I've added the code:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
php_value max_input_vars 5000
php_value suhosin.post.max_vars 5000
php_value suhosin.request.max_vars 5000
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

I also tried doing it like this:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

php_value max_input_vars 5000
php_value suhosin.post.max_vars 5000
php_value suhosin.request.max_vars 5000

# END WordPress

However, both cause a 500 Internal Server Error. I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong and was hoping to get your insight on it.

Here's a link to the FAQ / Article the developer of the plugin told me to use. https://www.ohmyquiz.io/knowledgebase/get-fatal-error-save-big-quiz/

Answer 1

As there are different modes that PHP can run in, it may be causing the internal server error (ie: FastCGI). You are better setting those values in your php.ini file or user.ini file to see if works that way.

In your php.ini or user.ini file, do the following:

max_input_vars = 5000