This post was last updated 11 years 4 months 28 days ago, some of the information contained here may no longer be actual and any referenced software versions may have been updated!

Today I discovered a Magento category that would not update. When I tried to update the category properties and save the category the ‘please wait’ dialog box remained on the screen indefinitely.

My error report alerting extension alerted me via email that there were new error reports in /var/report.

The error report showed :

“Warning: parse_str() [<a href=’function.parse-str’>function.parse-str</a>]: Input variables exceeded 1000. To increase the limit change max_input_vars in php.ini.”

I edited my apache php.ini and added

max_input_variable=2500

Restarted apache and I was able to update and save my category again. Note that the max_input_variable property was not present in php.ini, I had to manually add it.