[wp-testers] PHP timeout saving large Menu

[Peter van den Hamer (MSN)]

WP gurus,

I have a WordPress menu with 90 nodes. I ultimately will need maybe 150 nodes.
Saving the menu takes long, and now fails after about 40”. I get a blank screen.
Others (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14134 owned by Filosofo) ran in to trouble after only 12-16 nodes.

We get the following PHP error message:
> May 28 21:45:38 <hostname> apache2: PHP Fatal error:  Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in <path>/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1005

Doubling the timeout (admin was not entirely happy) did the trick. Summary of ticket 14134’s discussion thread:
  a.. problem was acknowledged, but some said that few people ran into this. 
  b.. markjaquith: “Priority changed from lowest to high. One proposed solution was to use JS to only send changed items, and then the item ordering. “ 
  c.. Filosofo: “I'll work on making a patch for 3.2. “ 
  d.. Jane Wells: “Milestone changed from 3.2 to Future Release. No patch since filosofo's comment 6 weeks ago. Past freeze, punting.”
Anything I should do to help it get/keep priority? 
Should I add info to the ticket (I am a lowly user/tester/newbie)?

I actually have evidence that these timeouts can _corrupt_ the database:
SELECT * FROM `wp_posts` ORDER BY `wp_posts`.`menu_order`  DESC
shows me a few records that have the same value of ‘menu_order’.
Which sounds credible if you are renumbering the nav_menu_item posts in a loop and the process aborts before completion.

Peter