WordPress: “Are you sure you want to do this?”
You: “Yes, I am sure I want to do this.”
WordPress: “Are you sure you want to do this?”
You: “Yes, I just hit the button to retry it. So, I’m pretty sure I want this to happen.”
WordPress: “Are you sure you want to do this?”
You: “What is it with you, WordPress? Yes, I do. What do you want, a blood oath!”
Pretty frustrating. I know. The problem here is that you are receiving a message that is teasing you into trying an operation, like installing a large theme or plugin, with no hope that operation will ever complete. It’s an error message, trying to be nice. But, no sense getting angry. Let’s move on.
If you are installing your theme from the WordPress theme installer, but get this message, most likely your web host configured your web server with PHP settings (the server-side programming language used by WordPress) too low to allow the theme ZIP file to upload and install correctly.
Specifically, let’s say the web host setup PHP to allow a maximum file upload size limit at 8 megabytes or less. But your premium theme ZIP file is perhaps 9.5 megabytes in size. You can see the problem.The web server is rejecting the upload and WordPress is alerting you to that fact in a most ambiguous message. The good news is that you can get this corrected, or go around it so to speak.
You can see your PHP configuration limits by installing a simple plugin called WordPress phpinfo().
There two ways to solve “Are You Sure You Want To Do This?”:
Ask your web host to increase your PHP server resource limits. Recommended PHP configuration limits are:
- max_execution_time 120
- memory_limit 128M
- post_max_size 32M
- upload_max_filesize 32M
You can upload your theme via a FTP client. Ask you web host for instructions on how to connect to your site via FTP. If you are not familiar with how to do that, view this video tutorial to learn how to install your theme via FTP.
The best option is the first because using a web hosting package with PHP server resources set low enough to cause this error in the first place is going to cause other problems for you later on when you site grows, or when you want to add that cool plugin that needs memory. Taking care of the issue now will save you a lot of headaches down the road.
