Why won't my PHP settings update in my Magento 2 store?
There are a number of ways to set PHP settings for your site. Usually logging into your site's cPanel and updating your PHP settings will do the trick, but with Magento 2 they have a ".user.ini" file included in the installation files that will overwrite what the server settings are. You can find the ".user.ini" in the root directory alongside ".htaccess." Make sure to turn on your hidden files so you can see your ".htaccess" and ".user.ini" files and make the appropriate updates needed. They suggest setting "memory_limit = 2G" for Magento to run properly.