Canvas Docs

Requirements For Canvas

Before installing WordPress and Canvas, ensure your hosting environment meets the requirements below. Using up to date software versions and proper server settings helps WordPress run efficiently, prevents errors during theme installation and demo imports, and allows Canvas features to work as intended. Almost any current WordPress host clears every item on this page; the point of reading it is knowing what to ask for when one does not.

WordPress And PHP Versions

Canvas declares two hard minimums, and the theme will not run correctly below either of them:

  • WordPress 6.8 or newer. Canvas organises its block patterns in category folders, which older WordPress versions do not scan, so on an older version whole pattern groups are missing from the editor.
  • PHP 7.4 or newer. Older PHP versions produce fatal errors.

Those are floors, not recommendations. A current PHP 8 release runs Canvas faster and, more importantly, still receives security fixes from the PHP project.

Note

All PHP versions 8.1 and below have reached end of life and no longer receive security fixes, so ask your host for a current PHP 8 release even though Canvas runs on PHP 7.4.

Canvas has no database requirement beyond what WordPress itself supports, so any MySQL or MariaDB version your WordPress version accepts is fine.

Server Limits That Matter

Canvas checks each of these itself on the Canvas > Health Check screen, and the values below are the ones that screen recommends:

  • PHP memory limit: 256M. Importing a demo loads content and media in one request, and a lower limit is the most common reason an import fails partway.
  • PHP max input vars: 3000. The Theme Options screen posts many fields at once. When PHP's limit is lower, everything past it is discarded silently: the page reports a successful save while losing settings.
  • Maximum upload size: 64M (upload_max_filesize and post_max_size). Demo packages can reach about 40 MB, and an upload larger than the server limit fails before Canvas ever sees it.
  • The ZipArchive PHP extension. Demo import and export both read and write ZIP packages, and without the extension the demo library cannot be used at all.
  • GD or Imagick. WordPress needs one of these image libraries to generate the thumbnail and cropped sizes Canvas blocks request.
  • A writable uploads directory. Demo media and form file uploads are saved there.
  • Outgoing HTTPS requests. License activation, updates and demo downloads all talk to the Canvas service over HTTPS, so a server that blocks outgoing connections cannot activate or update.

Configuration Inside WordPress

Two WordPress settings affect Canvas enough to check once:

  • Pretty permalinks (Settings > Permalinks, anything except Plain). The XML sitemap and structured data both depend on readable URLs, and search engines index the site poorly without them.
  • A persistent object cache such as Redis or Memcached is optional, but reduces repeated database queries on content heavy pages and is worth having on larger sites.

How To Verify Your Host

Starting screenCanvasHealth Check, once the theme is installed.

The screen runs every check above against your actual server and sorts the results into Passed, Suggested and Needs attention, so you do not have to gather the numbers yourself. Anything under Needs attention is worth fixing before you import a demo, because that is the operation that leans on the limits hardest. The same checks also appear inside the WordPress Site Health screen, so your host can read them there too.

Was this page helpful?