Strange characters appearing in wordpress

Question

I'm having a niggling wordpress problem

Whenever i'm adding an Apostrophe to a wordpress post I create

'

Its saving as a strange set of characters

â€™

I've used wordpress many times, never encountered this problem

I've uninstalled every single plugin, and the problem remains

I read somewhere to comment out these lines in wp-config.php but it doesn't help for new posts

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
//define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
//define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Can someone help me? DO need to set the Charset to override somewhere? How??

Is it saving in DB as â€™ or are they just displayed as that? — user850010, Apr 05 '13 at 20:14
Ah! getting somwhere! I checked the Database and sure enough funny characters are there too. Now what? Thank you so so much for responding! — Raphael Gluck, Apr 05 '13 at 20:23
Not sure if this would help but found similar question here:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3610098/seeing-strange-character-for-apostrophe-on-wordpress-based-page-but-only-in-int — user850010, Apr 05 '13 at 20:26
What about this? http://codex.wordpress.org/Converting_Database_Character_Sets — user850010, Apr 05 '13 at 20:28
@user850010 I wish I knew what part of that page was helpful to my problem I've read through it, but cannot fathom it — Raphael Gluck, Apr 05 '13 at 20:46

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 11 '17 at 07:41

1

If that strange character is stored in DB, then it seems that your DB is not set up with the UTF8 charset, so you can uncomment those 2 lines in wp-config.php, since they are not the source of the problem.

You have a comprehensive tutorial how to convert Character Sets with WordPress Database but here is the short list what to do:

Make a backup of your DB
Maybe it would be better make a copy of your site on your local computer and try the below changes there
Convert DB (this will not affect existing tables, just those future new created tables)

ALTER DATABASE MyDb CHARACTER SET utf8;
convert any tables in the database that are not already in the desired format.

Focus on the tables wp_posts and wp_postmeta

ALTER TABLE wp_posts CHARACTER SET utf8

ALTER TABLE wp_postmeta CHARACTER SET utf8
individually alter each column of each table to use the correct the character set. This is not a simple process, read carefully the section of above link regarding columns.

edited Dec 11 '17 at 07:41

Salomon Zhang

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answered Apr 05 '13 at 21:18

user850010

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I tried following that, namely ALTER DATABASE MyDb CHARACTER SET utf8; convert any tables in the database that are not already in the desired format. Focus on the tables wp_posts and wp_postmeta ALTER TABLE wp_posts CHARACTER SET utf8 ALTER TABLE wp_postmeta CHARACTER SET utf8 but to no avail, though I do feel we're on the way to solving!! Thanks – Raphael Gluck Apr 05 '13 at 23:07
Try opening some post in editor that contains that strange character and replace it with apostrophe and save that post. Does the apostrophe get saved correctly now? – user850010 Apr 06 '13 at 07:12
In the editor, everything seems ok, its only when i am viewing front end that this problem is occurring . thank you – Raphael Gluck Apr 08 '13 at 02:02
in myPHPAdmin, your your DB,Tables,Columns should say UTF-8 and also your website should use UTF-8. View one of the page with this problem and then look into the generated source code. In the beginning (in the head tag) what charset is used? For my site I have . You could also view source code when you are in editor, to check what charset is used there. – user850010 Apr 08 '13 at 07:30
Also check .htaccess file. It is also possible that some non UTF-8 charset is set there. http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/setting-charset-in-htaccess.html – user850010 Apr 08 '13 at 08:01

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '13 at 15:50

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I have to update the thread, as follows. I followed just about every tutorial out there addressing utf-8 mismatch, nothing helped Finally we spotted some phishing code had been injected into the root index file (also linked to some 3rd party adult site, but our site was not redirecting , Needless to say, we cleaned that up Many thanks for everyone for helping, especially @user850010 I hope This thread will be useful for others

answered Apr 09 '13 at 15:50

Raphael Gluck

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So the phishing code was in index.php and it changed charset? Anyway +1 for the useful information. – user850010 Apr 09 '13 at 19:59
@user850010 and a billion +1's for you! to me you're more than just a number!! I'm very grateful to you – Raphael Gluck Apr 10 '13 at 23:10

score -1 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 11 '16 at 16:07

-1

Run this query:

ALTER DATABASE MyDb CHARACTER SET utf8;

After edit wp_config.php and set:

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

edited Jan 11 '16 at 16:07

vard

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answered Jan 11 '16 at 12:43

rado razafindraibe

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Strange characters appearing in wordpress

3 Answers3

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