This plugin is based on the post “Convert MySQL Tables to UTF-8” and an existing plugin by g30rg3_x. The reason I modified their code is that they will convert all tables in your database to the UTF-8 charset, but what we need is to convert WP tables, so I changed the code "SHOW TABLES" to "SHOW TABLES LIKE " . $table_prefix . "%", which will guarantee other tables could stay untouched. Besides, g30rg3_x’s purpose was to alter the charset of old WP databases to new UTF-8 databases, but in fact we also need to change the charset after we moved our DB to a new host when the charset is not UTF-8 by default. Judging from my experience, the default charset/collation for many web hosts is latin1/latin1_swedish_ci (I don’t know why), whereas popular web-buidling systems often use utf8/utf8_general_ci, thus we need to change the charset before all content could be normally displayed. Without PHP and SHOW TALBES / SHOW COLUMNS, we will need to write endless code to change all tables and all columns.
mysql> select collation('asdf'); # default collation
+-------------------+
| collation('asdf') |
+-------------------+
| latin1_swedish_ci |
+-------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Download the UTF-8 DB Converter for WordPress
The critical part of this plugin is:
....
$sql2 = "ALTER TABLE $table DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci";
....
$sql4 = "ALTER TABLE $table CHANGE `$field_name` `$field_name` $field_type
CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin";
....
I don’t think I need to describe the installation again, but I sould warn you again about possible data lost during the conversion. Do back up early please.
thank you ..
plugin nice ..
but links i have not Convert to UTF-8 ..
Example:
% d8% a7% d8% aa% d8% b5% d9% 84 -% d8% a8% d9% 86% d8% a7
I want to convert:
اتصل بنا
That’s not a UTF-8 problem. You should use
urldecode()to decode the string to your (Arabian?) characters. For example:<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <?php echo urldecode("%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%B5%D9%84+%D8%A8%D9%86%D8%A7"); ?>Love the blog mate, keep up the good work – I’ll definitely recommend your blog to some friends of mine ^^
Thank you
but i have 1 question, i have sql file that was using iso-8859-1 for 2 years and then the user change the code to utf-8, will this repair and convert iso-8859-1 to utf8 ?
Worked perfectly. You just saved me a lot of time! Thanks so much!
Derek
thank you very much for the plugin!
Thank you so much for this plugin. I just applied it to my installation, and it worked perfectly with no troubles.
Dude, you rock! I’ve been trying to convert my db, which was a mess of latin and utf8. I found the previous WP plug-in and it butchered my posts, clipping them after any non-latin character (I write in English, but use em-dashes like their going out of style).
Your plugin worked without a hitch! You have no idea how grateful I am! Thanks again for fixing the previous version
Glad that it helps.
By the way, your web design looks really beautiful!
Yep. It helped a ton dude!
And thanks for the compliment, and the lovely plugin
Thank you! Plugin works great, and I can finally use UTF8 on my website
Thanks for the great plugin. I’m getting an error. Do you have any idea what this means?
wp_bdprss_items changed to UTF-8 successfully.---- item_feed_url changed to UTF-8 successfully.
SQL Error:
Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000 bytes
Sorry, I have no idea…
I first noticed a character set encoding problem ( see “Victim?s parents to speak on bullycase” here: http://carmel-indiana.us/page/6/ ). What was supposed to be an apostrophe was displaying as a question mark instead. I installed and activated the plugin. It indicated that it had fixed the encoding. But I don’t see that the post has been changed. Is the plugin supposed to fix posts that were posted prior to installation of the plugin?
You sir, are a lifesaver. Thank you very much for this plugin.
When I ran the plug-in I got the following:
wp_posts changed to UTF-8 successfully.
SQL Error:
Column ‘post_content’ cannot be part of FULLTEXT index
Any clue as to what I can do about the error and get rid of the charset issue?
Thanks much
Sorry, I have no idea. You may google and see if there is any luck, e.g. stackoverflow
hello!
i made an upgrade from 2.0.7 to 3.1 but i have problems it will not work
http://www.apfel.at/tagesgedanken1/?p=1259
from december on i copy the new articel new into it, so from
http://www.apfel.at/tagesgedanken1/?p=1
to
http://www.apfel.at/tagesgedanken1/?p=2222
the article have the problem, befor it was iso-8859-1
could you help?
thank you
regards
peter
hello!
thank you for your wonderfull work of the plugin
i tested it but in my case it will not work
from http://www.apfel.at/tagesgedanken1/?p=2224 to the last
http://www.apfel.at/tagesgedanken1/?p=2269 is ok
i put it after upgrade from 2.0.7 into 3.1 into
befor the old one i have iso-8859-1 so i did the upgrade with your plugin
from http://www.apfel.at/tagesgedanken1/?p=1
to
http://www.apfel.at/tagesgedanken1/?p=2222
but it will not change, what should i do?
regards
peter
Sorry but I don’t think my plugin can be of help in your case, because your original database was not encoded in UTF-8. This plugin does not translate the encoding (say, between ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8) — it just tells the database that the “correct” encoding should be UTF-8. In other words, it does not modify the data in your database.
thank you very much,
to you know how i could modify the database?
regards
peter
This is a painful problem for me, and I’m not good at the encoding problems at MySQL level. Maybe the manual page could help: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-convert.html
To avoid such problems, I just use UTF-8 for everything.
I have a better solution, which might save you a little bit time. If you have a backup of your original database or website, you can export your blog posts in WordPress into an XML file; then you can use some text editors to convert the encoding to UTF-8 (this is much easier than manipulating MySQL if you are unfamiliar with MySQL); in the end you can import the UTF8-encoded XML file into your WordPress.
hi!!
i go back to 2.0.7 activate the plugin but it did not work the error
SQL Error:
You have an error in your SQL syntax near ‘DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci’ at line 1
what could i do to get it work if could give an an login if you want to help me
thank you
peter
As I said, this plugin does not help you really convert the encoding of the data — it only tells the MySQL database about the real encoding. You need to use other approaches to complete the encoding conversion (the possible one has been given above).
Hello,
I have made one fix to your excellent plugin. On line 132, replace
$sql4 = “ALTER TABLE $table CHANGE `$field_name` `$field_name` $field_type CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin”;
with
$sql4 = “ALTER TABLE $table CHANGE `$field_name` `$field_name` $field_type CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci”;
This is so that when you are manually editing/viewing the field within phpMyAdmin, the text that is stored in the field will be human readable. Without this change, it appears as binary-encoded data, which is very inconvenient to use.
Thanks! I have updated this plugin in the WordPress repository.