WordPress Charset Encoding Problem After Upgrading to Version 2.2
WordPress blogs that upgraded to Wordpress version 2.2 may encounter strange character set (charset) encoding problem where several characters especially apostrophes (’), quotation marks (”), and hyphens or dashes (—) are displayed as strange characters such as ’ or simply as question marks (?) when the posts are output to web pages. As you have probably suspected, the issue is caused by character encoding method used by WordPress 2.2 which supports setting of database collation and character set in WordPress config file.
The error happens because up to and including WordPress ver 2.1.3, almost all WordPress databases were created using the latin1 character set and the latin1_swedish_ci collation. Beginning WordPress v2.2, WordPress allows the user to define both the database character set and the collation in wp-config.php file, using DB_CHARSET and DB_COLLATE values. With these values set to another encoding, WordPress assumes that the databases are indeed using the charset and collation too, where it’s not the case for existing WordPress installation. So if you’re upgrading WordPress to 2.2 using the default wp-config.php, or have manually modified the file to include the new variables, or upgrading by using Fantastico which automatically update the wp-config.php file to include these two definitions which values set as Unicode UTF-8 by default, you will need to remove these definitions to solve the character encoding error.
Open and edit your WordPress wp-config.php file. Then locate the following two lines:
define(’DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
define(’DB_COLLATE’, ”);
You can simply delete these 2 lines away, or just remove the utf8 from the first line to make them looks like this:
define(’DB_CHARSET’, ”);
define(’DB_COLLATE’, ”);
With no charset and collation values set, WordPress will fall back to the old default, latin1 which matched the databases.
A possible better solution is convert the Wordpress database to UTF8 Unicode.
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Entries (RSS)
July 4th, 2009 05:18
[...] Update: Chinese and Swedish alike should be displayed properly now. The problem arises when converting to new versions of WorpPress, but by changing a few parameters, it’s possible to let WordPress revert to the old way of handling charactersets. The solution to the problem can be found here. [...]
May 3rd, 2009 11:20
I solved following these steps:
http://www.levysoft.it/archivio/2007/07/06/risolvere-il-problema-della-visualizzazione-errata-dei-caratteri-accentati-su-wordpress-cambiando-il-charset-da-iso-8859-a-utf-8/
March 29th, 2009 05:14
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
January 31st, 2009 02:33
Thank you a lot! It worked out perfectly. Now, I have to convert everything to UTF8.
December 23rd, 2008 12:49
[...] WordPress Charset Encoding Problem After Upgrading to Version 2.2 اقرأ المزيد عن …أهلا 2.5، ومرة أخرى مشكلة الترميز بحمدالله تم الانتقال إلى النسخة الحديثة 2.5 من ووردبريس، وكل…ما الجديد! تم اصدار نسخة جديدة من برنامج ووردبريس، وكما ذكر في…WYSI-Wordpress محرر نصوص متقدم Wysi-Wordpress محرر تنسيق المدونات لمن يريد اختيارات أكثر و حرية… [...]
October 17th, 2008 13:15
Thank you for this post!
September 16th, 2008 10:05
[...] caused due to the encoding and collation, however after following the recommendations of sites like http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/0…to-version-22/ I was still unable to get rid of the huge amount of garbled characters. Ultimately, I spent some [...]
September 6th, 2008 19:50
Thanks so much — you saved me hours of hair pulling!
August 24th, 2008 11:20
Thanks! Saved me a lot of time.
August 23rd, 2008 05:24
thanks
June 18th, 2008 08:42
Isn’t UTF8 much better? Why would you limit yourself to Latin1 just because it used to be the default?
June 6th, 2008 20:56
Just wanted to say: this had afflicted me for months. Never found a workable solution. Stumbled on your site today and it worked perfectly. Thanks so much!
February 19th, 2008 05:04
Hi, thanks for doing this. it’s the only thing I’ve found. I remove the utf8 and a lot of my posts still have the question marks. any ideas what I may need to do?
February 17th, 2008 03:44
thanks for the help, it worked out for me
January 5th, 2008 06:55
Thx a lot!
You saved me hours!
November 19th, 2007 03:31
[...] de upgrade (localizado em wp-admin/upgrade.php), os posts apareciam com os acentos todos marados. A solução mais rápida é editar o ficheiro wp-config.php e deixar os valores das constantes DB_CHARSET e [...]
October 27th, 2007 03:18
thanks!
October 21st, 2007 09:39
Thank you so much for this. It fixed the error.
September 19th, 2007 20:10
[...] questo post viene spiegato il problema e presentata una soluzione. In realtà nel mio caso il problema sembra [...]
September 15th, 2007 01:59
[...] also applied a charset encoding hack to my wp-config.php. All this combined solved my line break problem. Share and Enjoy: These icons [...]
August 31st, 2007 03:18
[...] this excellent article will give you the answers you need to your broken WordPress install: WordPress Charset Encoding Problem After Upgrading to Version 2.2 » My Digital Life WordPress blogs that upgraded to Wordpress version 2.2 may encounter strange character set [...]
August 31st, 2007 03:14
[...] You can read more about the problem, and the solution, at MyDigitalLife. [...]
August 30th, 2007 08:48
Thanks a lot! It works!
August 30th, 2007 04:37
[...] fixed that issue (commenting out define(’DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′); and define(’DB_COLLATE’, ”);) – further explanation of this fix can be found at My Digital Life although I haven’t been brave enough to convert the character set and collation [...]
August 13th, 2007 03:23
[...] Editerat: Nu hittade jag vad det handlade om, om du råkat ut för samma sak, kolla här. [...]
August 11th, 2007 22:31
[...] found something here but it does not seem to work for my [...]
July 29th, 2007 04:24
[...] trovato in particolare questo ottimo post che mi ha permesso risolvere il problema in 5 secondi, è bastato modificare un parametro nel file [...]
July 24th, 2007 20:46
[...] Long version can be found at this site [...]
July 17th, 2007 13:55
You are awesome. We need more people like you here on Earth.
July 14th, 2007 10:26
[...] was panicking when I saw that my database had these characters EVERYWHERE. Then I found this great article on the subject. It clearly states how to fix the problem. Thank goodness. I was totally going to make things [...]
July 11th, 2007 06:23
[...] WordPress Charset Encoding Problem After Upgrading to Version 2.2 [...]
July 2nd, 2007 21:26
[...] 2007-07-02) Josef tipsade om den här länken. Lite fix med ftp senare så är vi nästan tillbaka på banan [...]
July 2nd, 2007 04:00
God Bless You, Man!!!
June 29th, 2007 06:57
[...] posts, mas como tenho mais 3 blogs isso era um problema. Dando uma procurada no Google, achei este post que resolveu isso. A solu
June 27th, 2007 22:31
Thanks!! You save my blog
June 27th, 2007 09:16
Man, thank you, don’t know why I didn’t think of that before – I has going insane – appreciate it.
June 24th, 2007 23:54
Awesome, thanks so much!
June 24th, 2007 19:40
[...] My Digital Life explains in detail about the problem I experienced (see also the Trac and the Codex) and a (temporary) workaround—this worked for me, by the way. But if you’re not a fan of latin1 character set and associated latin1_swedish_ci collation, then I’d recommend this UTF-8 database converter plugin. Run once, it’s painless—this worked for me too, except for non-english characters (like if you used the caret ones natively in posts and or pages). [...]
June 23rd, 2007 03:36
[...] Since WordPress 2.2, WordPress supports feature that allows the user to define both the WordPress database character set and collation with DB_CHARSET and DB_COLLATE values in wp-config.php file. With these values defined, WordPress will use the designated database characterset (charset) and database collation (i.e. sort order of the letters, numbers, and symbols of a character set) when connecting a database tables. However, in existing WordPress installations that are upgraded from earlier version of WordPress or not explicitly set a Unicode UTF-8 charset collation, the default database character set is normally set up as Latin1 (default on almost all MySQL installation) with latin1_swedish_ci collation. If you run a bilingual or multilingual blog with WordPress, you may face problem on character encoding when your blog posts are written in other foreign languages, or when you export and backup the database and later attempt to re-import the database dump in the event of database failure or server migration and moving. The symptom is obvious, your WordPress posts or pages will contains garbled, weird and funny characters, sometime just lots of ????? (question marks), rendering the WordPress database with your hard work useless and output unreadable. (May cause also by wrong charset collation) [...]
June 19th, 2007 22:35
Thank you lifesaver!