I\'m building a RESTS like service in PHP that should accept a large JSON post as main data (I send and read the data much like discussed here: http://forums.laravel.io/view
Realy, change max_input_vars using .htaccess file is working but you need to restart Apache service.
Follow the complete process:
C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.confhttpd.confxampp/htdocsAllowOverride# before AllowOverride delete the #AllowOverride insert php_value max_input_vars 10000