Unwanted Question Marks in posts

  • Resolved muomega

    (@muomega)


    17 years, 11 months ago

    I’m changing host servers (moving over to bluehost) and I exported my wordpress MySQL database from my old host and imported it to the new host.

    What’s happened is that, when I view my wordpress blog on my new host, seemingly random question marks have been inserted into the text of my old posts.

    I looked at the imported data in the new database with phpMyAdmin, and the question marks don’t appear there.

    Furthermore, I added a new post using the new host server and the new wordpress install and no question marks appeared in that post, but when I look at the data in phpMyAdmin, I see a capital “A” with a carrot above it scattered within the text (usually after periods).

    Software versions are (old host/new host):
    mySQL: 4.0.21/4.1.18-standard-log
    PHP: 4.4.1/4.4.1

    Any ideas? Thanks! -Rob

    P.S. Below is some copy/paste text showing the Q-marks:
    “File this story from the New York Times under Only in New York.? A group of eighteen grandmothers who have termed themselves the Granny Peace Brigade are?on trial in Manhattan?for protesting the war in Iraq by blocking the entrance to the Times Square military recruiting center.?”

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Mark (podz)

    (@podz)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    Yup.

    First – keep the db backup. That’s important.

    This is how I cured a blog earlier.
    phpmyadmin
    click to browse the wp_posts table
    click SQL

    In that box, paste this:
    UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content=REPLACE(post_content, 'xyz', '');

    where XYZ is the A with the hat and the ” are nothing.
    It will replace all the A with nothing.

    Copy/paste the A – don’t try and make it.

    Then refresh the page – but delete the cache FIRST or you will see a cached page.

    The above worked for me – but do keep the backup!

    Thread Starter muomega

    (@muomega)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    Podz – This seems to be a solution for getting rid of the “A”s, but the “A”s don’t seem to be a problem since they don’t show up when I view the blog.

    What is showing up are Question Marks, and I can’t find a source for them when I look at the data in phpMyAdmin.

    Chris_K

    (@handysolo)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    Use podz’s suggestion, but cut and past the question marks instead of the A’s…

    Thread Starter muomega

    (@muomega)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    The problem with that solution is that I’ll lose every real question mark! Besides, if I can’t see the Q-marks in the database data (I only see the Q-marks when I view the blog) would that solution work?

    Mark (podz)

    (@podz)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    The A’s in the db become ? on the blog.

    The ? are white with a black surround?
    Replace the A’s and the ? will go.

    Thread Starter muomega

    (@muomega)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    No — I moved my SQL data from a db on my old host server to a new db on my new host server with a new wp install. All the old posts look ok in phpMyAdmin, but when I view the new blog install, they show up with Q-marks.

    When I created a new post in the new db on the new host using the new wp install, I see A’s in the data, but the post looks fine when I view the blog.

    So the ?’s and A’s are not directly related to one another.

    moshu

    (@moshu)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    Let me ask in a different way: are the capital “A” with a carrot above things in the DB in the same place where question marks appear on display?

    Edit. OK, typing slowly…

    Thread Starter muomega

    (@muomega)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    Since the A’s and ?’s are not found in the same posts, then no.

    HOWEVER, both the ?’s and A’s both often appear after periods (“.”), so they do seem related in this way.

    Mark (podz)

    (@podz)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    If you have a backup copy of the database, why not try what I said above?

    I really did cure a blog with 3 months of entries earlier by doing what I said – and if it all goes wrong, you nuke the db and start over.

    Thread Starter muomega

    (@muomega)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content=REPLACE(post_content, ‘xyz’, ”);

    where XYZ is the A with the hat and the ” are nothing.
    It will replace all the A with nothing.

    Tried it and got an interesting result…

    It did not eliminate the ?’s in the posts that had ?’s. However, the new post which had no ?’s and had the A’s now has the unwanted ?’s.

    So when I removed the A’s I got ?’s. Weird.

    Thread Starter muomega

    (@muomega)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    Fixed it:

    When I looked carefully at the post text I discovered that their were two unique characters used for spaces. One seemed to be the normal space character, and then there was a second space character which appeared less frequently.

    I used the SQL query podz gave me and replaced that second space character with nothing. Voila, no more ?’s in my blog.

    Obviously something on my new host server (either the new wordpress install or some software package) was interpreting this space character as a ?.

    Thanks for the help guys!

    krunkyou

    (@krunkyou)

    17 years ago

    I’m having the exact same problem with question marks. I tried podz query, with the A in place of xyz, I got the same result as muomega–it replaced the A’s with ? marks.

    My question is about the “unique characters” muomega found. In the database, everything looks normal. Where would I find these unique characters? In the database? In the code? Thanks in advance for your help.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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