If after upgrading your MySql server or after upgrading your self-hosted WordPress install to a later version, your WP posts show gibberish characters (see image below), chances are the character set in your MySql install is ‘latin1′ which is causing incompatibility with the ‘utf8′ WordPress default charset.
According to MySql resources, you can convert your default server charset from ‘latin1′ to ‘utf8′ by modifying the server’s initialization file. This is fine if you have the time and technical skills, and of course access to your server’s root files.
The easiest workaround I found out, and without touching your server’s root files at that, on how get rid of those “funny characters” is to edit one of the lines in your wp-config.php file.
To do this, open the wp-config.php in a text editor after downloading the file via FTP to your local drive, or opening the wp-config.php using the file manager of your server’s control panel.
Once opened, look for that line (about line number 30) commented out with /** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
Next to that line is: define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
Simply change ‘utf8′ to ‘latin1′ and save the file, and then upload the file to your server if you edited the file in your local drive. Otherwise, just close the editing window of your Control Panel’s file manager.
That’s it.
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