WordPress › Support » � symbol is appearing everywhere!

sheenp
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Hi!

I'm having so many issues! Odd symbols are appearing. This is the latest: �

How do I get rid of this? My charset is UTF-8

Thank you!!
Sheen
Knut Sparhell
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

What happens with the default theme (Twenty Eleven)?
sheenp
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Hi Knut!

Same issue.
kmessinger
Volunteer Moderator
Posted 8 months ago #

I did see some at first but now I can't find any. Please post a url to a page which has a problem.
4mostip
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

When I hit this issue it is usually a mismatch between the charset my website announced in it's headers and the charset it actually output.

There is an easy test - I only use Firefox so please bear with me - go to View tab and select character encoding. Try the different charset options given (it won't do any damage!).

If you can find a charset with which the page displays correctly then that is the charset you are actually using on the web page.

So now it is just a matter of changing one or the other into agreement.
Probably is easiest just to change the header section. If the params in your header section are different or missing, then just set charset to the charset FF says that you are actually transmitting!

Steve
sheenp
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Hi!

The symbols went away when I changed the charset back to -4, but then another symbol appeared. Should I just leave it at -4 and delete the symbol throughout the site?

Thank you again!!
Sheen
4mostip
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Hi Sheen,

I don't know - my browser actually gives me names for character sets like UTF-8, Windows-1252 or ISO-8859-1 ........

Give me your URL expressed in text so the filters don't mangle it, and I'll have a look at the page for you.

Skip the httxx.. stuff ... I just need domain, directory, and page such as

Domain is "My Domain name without TLD"
My TLD is "com or org or net or whatever"
My Directory is "root" or "directory path"
Page name is "basename, i.e. without extension"
Extension is "php or html or whatever"

Capiche?

Steve
4mostip
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

PS if you don"t want to publicly refer to the URL here, mail my user name at gmail dot com
Steve
kmessinger
Volunteer Moderator
Posted 8 months ago #

http://www.essentialalchemist.com is the site correct?

The symbols went away when I changed the charset back to -4
Where is this -4 thing?
kmessinger
Volunteer Moderator
Posted 8 months ago #

Where is this -4 thing?
utf-4 no you can't leave it at that.
4mostip
Member
Posted 8 months ago #
```
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US" xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/">
<head>
<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="3234A16C79765EEE37D0A7874DE3FA3B" />
<meta charset="UTF-4" />
```
The problem lies right there in the meta charset which is set to UTF-4 when it should be UTF-8

I've browsed your page with FF and it IS definitely UTF-8.
It displays just fine for me - probably because I've set up my browser to scan for the ACTUAL charset (i.e. to ignore the announced one).

Your problem is that your header section is announcing "utf-4".
(which I have never even heard of ...)

So - you need to get that line to read

<meta charset="UTF-8" />`

Over ................

Steve
kmessinger
Volunteer Moderator
Posted 8 months ago #

Once you get it changed back to UTF-8 if the problem is still there start the normal wordpress debug.

- deactivating all plugins (yes, all) to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s). If you can't get into your admin dashboard, try resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.
- switching to the Twenty Eleven theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.
4mostip
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

@kmessenger

Isn't wp-config the place to change the character set?
If so, could you remind us of the command syntax, plz.

Secondly, the existing mysql data base probably needs a clean-up, so she will need
1) the SQL command to export all posts and comments,
2) some text editor advice on how to batch convert utf-4 or UTF-4 to utf-8 (or UTF-8) , i.e. a case insensitive solution
3) the SQL commands to import the updated posts and comments file to replace the originals.

Steve
kmessinger
Volunteer Moderator
Posted 8 months ago #
sheenp started with utf-8 so I would think the database was created with that. If not, this plugin can change it, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/utf-8-db-converter/

In wp-config.php there is this to create the character set in the db
```
/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
```
4mostip
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

On browsing through her site - it seems that the odd character still misbehaving is coded in Windows-1252 or ISO-8859-1 , so your db converter should fix any remaining problems nicely.

Only concern is what the side-effects (if any) might be on the existing utf-8 coded records. Would it be safer to do a two stage conversion via ISO-8859-1 ?
sheenp
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Hello wonderful people!

Thank you so much for all of the time you've put forth in helping me. When I switched from utf-8 to utf-4 it got rid of one of the codes but now I keep finding this "Â". I'm not sure what to do. As you may have guessed, I'm not a "coder". :)

Thank you again!!
Sheen
4mostip
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

Hi Sheen,

Firefox now displays your pages PERFECTLY when instructed to expect Windows-1252 as the character set!!

What browser and operating system are you using to look at the site?
I'll try to take a peek "through your eyes" ....

BTW - helping lovely ladies is classic nerd displacement activity.
A pleasurable rosy glow for being a good neighbor - substitutes nicely for the guilt feelings over never taking exercise, not sleeping normal hours, eating junk, drinking junk, etc etc.

LOL
Steve
jureIPSR
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

I have the same problem!

A few days ago firefox and IE started to display my site wrong wwww.kastelicspringer.eu

The encoding should be UTF-8 (it is set in the wp_config) but when I examine the sourcecode in FF it says that it's set to UTF-7.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-7" />

Where can I change this property --- where is the wordpress file containing "head" meta instructions?

Thanks for any help.
sheenp
Member
Posted 6 months ago #

Hey 4mostip!

I just saw your reply. :) THANK YOU!! You are a sweetheart.

With love and appreciation,
Sheen
sheenp
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

Hi again!

This symbol "�" has started appearing again. Any ideas?

Thank you!!
Sheen
sheenp
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

Hi again!

This symbol "�" has started appearing again. Any ideas?

I've only imported some blogs from another blog, yet even new posts are having this issue. This has been an ongoing problem for over two months and I would appreciate help as I do not know coding.

Thank you!!
Sheen

Reply

You must log in to post.

WordPress.org

Forums

� symbol is appearing everywhere! (21 posts)

Reply

About this Topic

Tags

Code is Poetry