Reply To: Can't update plugin or fields

• John Huebner

• July 24, 2015 at 12:29 pm

@gwenzez,

I’ve recently had the same issue with a client site. On one field group there is a repeater that has a huge number of fields to meet their requirements. At a certain point the page just times out. This is not a limitation with ACF per se, it is really a limitation in WP due to the way it updates custom fields.

Each field in ACF causes an update_post_meta() function call and each of these function calls creates a new database request. At some point the number of database requests just becomes too much and the page load times out.

There is a work-a-round. If you set the time limit on scripts significantly high enough set_time_limit(0); the server will continue to process the data after the page load has timed out. The reason it does this is that PHP does not test to see if the user has disconnected until it tries to send data and since PHP does not try to send data until after all the database processing is done it blissfully continues processing.

These are the steps to take when this is happening
1) Initially publish or save the post with minimal data
2) When a timeout occurs, click the browser back button
3) DO NOT click the publish/update button
4) Reload the page until all of the changes appear