Not an area of expertise, but wouldn't changing the meta tag be a good place to start?

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

to

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

You'd simply need to change this in your skin's _main.php file.

Caveat: I've never played around much with character encoding, so maybe something more is required?

You might also check your regional setting in b2evolution (App Settings -> Regional) ... changing the charset there AND in the default "messages.pot" file in the "locales" subdir?

Hope this helps you.

I wish it was that simple. I've been looking into the topic this afternoon but I am not ready yet with a comlpete answer. A place to start is [url=http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=10992&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=database+utf8]this post[/url], but the code mentioned works only for 1.9 versions of B2evo. If you can handle the changes in the database with phpMyAdmin, there is enough information in the article. Else I will have a thourough look at the presented code.

So please report back to this topic and keep checking it for more information.

Good luck

Afwas wrote:

I wish it was that simple. I've been looking into the topic this afternoon but I am not ready yet with a comlpete answer. A place to start is [url=http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=10992&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=database+utf8]this post[/url], but the code mentioned works only for 1.9 versions of B2evo. If you can handle the changes in the database with phpMyAdmin, there is enough information in the article. Else I will have a thourough look at the presented code.

So please report back to this topic and keep checking it for more information.

Good luck

Yes, I thought in the same way as STK at first... but things looked too easy and I was afraid of ruining my database somehow. So, I stepped back and came here to consult the experts. Thanks STK, anyway.

Your post specifies v1.9 which is still alpha. I also read your other post with the fixes. A little complicated but I can handle it. The problem is that 1.9 is alpha yet. Maybe when it changes to beta, I will try that after backing up my database 1,987,998,776,998 times :lol: , you know. Drive safely... build a database safely, hehe.

No doubt I will keep checking this post for more information. It would be great a version including utf-8 by default. W3C recommends utf-8, although it is not obligatory. For people working with, say, eastern languages, it is a nightmare to edit NCR's (e.g. &#6547, etc.) represeting eastern characters. Yes, people can see "in the blog" the transliterated characters rather well (signs, at least, Sanskrit signs are shown terribly). Anyway, the problem comes if one has to edit some post with NCR's, haha. A real madness 8|

Thank you Afwas for your help. I am staying sharp for more tips!

I checked the code and found no errors, if you really did make a backup you can run the first code mentioned in the post I linked to. Remember to change three or four database essentials: Three in the first line:

$conn = mysql_connect("localhost", "YOURDBUSER", "YOURDBPASSWORD");

and one in line 42:

$rs2 = mysql_query("SHOW DATABASES LIKE 'YOURDBTOFIX'");

.
It spits out a tremendous list of SQL queries that you can copy/paste into a phpMyAdmin SQL box. Excecuting the commands will take a while, but a perfect adjusted database is the result.
Don't forget to change the conf/_locale.php file as metioned in the post.

Hope to hear from you. If you run into trouble or have subsequent questions also!

Good luck