latin1

by default mysql is installed as latin1 and sometimes it causes problems when your data is not always latin1. Follow the steps to change mysql to utf and also convert existing databases to UTF8 #1 backup your databases and convert it to UTF8 mysqldump -uusername -ppassword -c -e –default-character-set=utf8 –single-transaction –skip-set-charset –add-drop-database -B dbname -r dbname.utf8.dump.sql do this for each of your databases. #2 shutdown mysql service mysqld stop #3 edit /etc/my.cnf ADD to [mysqld] section # init_connect=’SET collation_connection = utf8_unicode_ci’ init_connect=’SET NAMES utf8′ character-set-server=utf8 collation-server=utf8_unicode_ci skip-character-set-client-handshake also [client] default-character-set=utf8 #4 restart mysqld service mysqld start #5 import your databases… Continue Reading →