Russian chars in MySQL are Ok but no in the forum

[Christos Teriakis]

Originally Posted by ntldr1962

Hello!

we are developing a forum, then we have found this error:

we set up in the MySQL (via phpmyadmin) the encoding for the MySQL into UTF-8 because we are importing information in Russian language, then we have found this mistakes:

1.- in the MySQL database we can read fine the text but not in the forum (see images please)

2.- In the admincp language english we set up also the encoding in UTF-8

3.- but in theforum we see weird signs like ????

what did i forgot?

any help would be appreciated

I don't think that you used the right way, especially if you have already data in your database.

1. Using COLLATE utf8_general_ci is not the right choice. Better use utf8_unicode_ci
2. Changing it from phpMyAdmin is also not correct, especially when you're also changing charset eg from iso-8859-1 to utf8 avoid to use phpMyAdmin.
3. The best way is to do the changes from the command line if you've shell access.
4. Finally, after conversion you need to change the data from your backup sqldump (hope you know that you've to get a full database backup before such actions), by using iconv

Chris