I hope someone can help.
I was dropping some tables that were created by some old plugins from my WordPress database and accidentally dropped one that was needed by the core WordPress installation. I had a backup of my blog so restored to this and everything was fine, or so I thought.
However, now I seem to have characters such as – “ ’ †appearing in all my old posts where the should be ' ! " etc... and at sometimes at the end of a sentance.
You can see this clearly here - http://bluntedpresents.co.uk/blog/?p=673
This was not a problem before I did the restore. Can anyone tell me how to fix this problem? Its driving me mad!
Many thanks in advance,
Ssor
I found a plugin that sorted some of the problems:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-utf8-sanitize/
Install the UTF8 Sanitize WordPress plugin and you will be able to fight those ugly characters. Additionally, you can customize what actions you want to perform on them - either convert them to their original values once and for all by modifing your posts’ database, OR leave all your posts intact and instead convert the ugly chars each time a post is loaded (all these options are controlled from the WordPress admin panel).
I'm still having a problem with  characters that seem to appear before the english £ (pound) sign...
The above plugin didn't catch all the problems and only works whilst its active.
This Plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/utf-8-database-converter/ seems to have done the trick and can be de-activated and removed. Changes are perminant.
I'll stop talking to myself now, hopefully some other will find this usefull...
Thanks for talking to yourself! Because it helped me out! I wasn't careful with my upgrade and ended up with the same problems.
AldebaranJill
Member
Posted 1 year ago #
I also have an issue with  and tried runing the http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/utf-8-database-converter/ and while it didn't fix it, it didn't break anything, and I'm running 2.5.1. Just in case this helps someone.
jeremyers1
Member
Posted 1 year ago #
I just had the same problem with my recent upgrade to 2.6.
The problem is in your wp-config.php file. It contains this line:
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
Just remove this line, and that should fix it. At least, it did for me...
workerbeej
Member
Posted 1 year ago #
In my case, it was that I didn't edit and rename the wp-config-sample.php to make my new wp-config.php, simply copied the old one. Adding,/em> the extra lines (including that DB_CHARSET line) back in to the wp-config.php file was the thing that solved the weird character problem for me.
My weird characters were not the  and †kind, though - I had little black diamonds with what looked like tiny white question marks in the middle! Anyway, using the correct wp-config.php fixed it right up.
Hope this helps someone...
Same problem again, moved hosts, uploaded the database and have encountered characters such as  and …….
I have tried the suggestions from both jeremyers1 and workerbeej but to no effect. I don't want to use the plugin as its not supported in WordPress 2.6.2 which is the version I'm running.
lmonaco
Member
Posted 8 months ago #
this one worked for me!
especially helpfull after import of data
works on output or cleans the DB permanently. very cool
http://kaloyan.info/blog/proekti/wordpress-proekti/wp-utf8-sanitize-plugin/
antagon
Member
Posted 8 months ago #
get precise with charset compatibility in wp-config.php and your mySQL dbase. define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8'); is not the same as define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8_unicode_ci'); ...that made all the difference for me where plugins failed.
ssor
Dave333