This error, 413 request entity too large occurs when you try to upload or make a client request that is too large to be processed by the web server, in the case of an Nginx HTTP server. If the server setting has a request size limit that is too small, your users/clients may come across this error a lot. So you will probably want to adjust the web server settings to allow larger requests. One of the common issues webmasters encounter when managing WordPress is allowing the server to allow file upload via the WordPress media library. WordPress allows users to upload new themes and plugin files, however, if your Nginx-powered website isn’t configured to allow the large file to be uploaded, the upload process will fail always. Some common errors users get when dealing with file uploads with WordPress are:

Http error attempting to upload media the uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini maximum execution time exceeded allowed memory size exhausted and many more.

Before continuing with the steps below, please make sure to back up your system.

Configure WordPress directory permissions

First, make sure the directory WordPress is running in has the correct permission for the Nginx web server to operate. On Ubuntu systems, the root directory is almost always at /var/www/html. So, run the commands below to give Nginx web server full access to that directory.

Adjust PHP-FPM settings

Next, adjust PHP-FPM settings to allow larger file uploads. By default, PHP-FPM is only allowed to upload a certain file size, so there’s a limit. Adjust the file upload size limit and other directives in PHP-FPM. On Ubuntu 18.04 and up, the default PHP-FPM configuration file is stored in the file below: The x in the line above can either be a 0 or 1, 2, 3 or 4 So, open the PHP-FPM configuration file by running the commands below and adjusting the settings to suit your environment. Then scroll down the file line by line and adjust each directive with the value below: Save your changes. If the file size you’re uploading is greater than 100MB, then adjust the upload_max_filesize to be greater than the file size.

Adjust Nginx configurations

Nginx also has limited definitions. If you don’t define the size limit in the Nginx configuration, whatever you do in the PHP configuration file may not apply to Nginx. To allow Nginx to also upload a larger file, open Nginx configuration and add the values as defined below: On Ubuntu systems, Nginx default site configuration files are stored at /etc/Nginx/sites-available/default If you have a custom file in there, adjust the highlighted values also. Save the file and continue Finally, restart Nginx and PHP-FPM for the new settings to take effect Now go and try to upload the file you want with a size smaller than 100MB This should do it.