MySQL Max Allowed Packet Value

If you receive a "Packets larger than max_allowed_packet" error while using a MySQL Database, you will need to increase the MySQL variable max_allowed_packet value from 1MB, the default value, to a much larger size. Start with 5MB.

This error happens because some images such as photos can be bigger than 1MB and MySQL is defined to only accept 1MB BLOB values by default.

You can find instructions on changing this value on the MySQL website here:

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/packet-too-large.html

There are also some discussions on the subject here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8062496/how-to-change-max-allowed-packet-size