Special characters messed up in ZC Admin

[magicpants]

I recently installed a fresh copy of 1.3.0.1 on a new webhost (linux virtual server) The special danish characters (å, ø, æ) are not displaying correctly in ZC admin. They are replaced by ? and gobbledy gook.

I was plagued with similar problems in my database and on the webpages since installing, due to not using the right collation when creating the database. Over the last few days, I've managed to clear that up (with Absolute's kind help) but the problem in ZC Admin remains.

If the info in the database is "Tilbehør", it'll display correctly on the webpage, but in ZC admin, it'll read "Tilbeh?>" If I edit that category and then save without touching the name, it'll then display on my website as "Tilbeh?>". If I fix the name in admin, it'll be incorrect on the webpage and in the database.

I've tried to change the locale and charsets to everything I can think of, but nothing's worked.

Here's some info on my new setup:
PHP version: 4.4.2
MySQL Version Reported = 4.1.18-standard
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE= "en-us,en;q=0.5"
HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET= "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7"
SERVER_SOFTWARE= "Apache/2.0.51 (Fedora)"

Please, anybody with some help or suggestions -- I would really appreciate it.

[magicpants]

Nobody has any ideas here? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[magicpants]

I realized you guys could use more information. Here's what I have in the main language files:

admin/includes/languages/danish.php:
setlocale(LC_TIME, 'da_DK.ISO_8859-1');
define('CHARSET', 'iso-8859-1');

includes/languages/danish.php:
@setlocale(LC_TIME, 'da_DK.ISO_8859-1');
define('CHARSET', 'iso-8859-1');

Let me know if any other info will help. Thanks, MP

[magicpants]

I'm sorry to bump but I'm really desperate for some kind of direction on this problem. I'm willing to pay to have this fixed, because I'm not sure if all the work I'm continuing to do on the site won't be undermined by some initial error in encoding, collating, etc. - It'd be disastrous if I had to start from scratch now, even worse later.

Does anyone have any clue what's going on? Suggestions on things to check, places to look, rumors or innuendos? Anything...

[Kim]

Are the characters displaying properly in the catalog?

[cr33dog]

How about a guess?

I haven't had this problem with ZC, but other PHP scripts - if a .php file is saved with the wrong encoding/charset, it can mess up the special chars... Since you say it's working in the shop, but not admin, maybe a .php file in admin/ is saved w/the wrong character set?

Second guess - is there anything different in your web server's config between yourstore/ and yourstore/admin. .htaccess, etc?

Sorry - I'm not much help!
Chris

[magicpants]

Yes the characters display correctly in the catalog if it's set correctly in the database. The admin is messed up. But, I can correct it in the admin, and then the database and catalog are messed up.

Chris, no -- your guess is helpful! It gets me looking in the right places. I'll check out what you recommend and get back with the answers.

[magicpants]

I replaced my admin folder with a fresh 1.3.0.1 copy -- merged in my configure settings. The problem's still there.

I don't have any htaccess files in my admin. What else should I check?

[magicpants]

I noticed in my database that some fields (category_description, etc) were collated as utf-8_danish_ci and some other fields were latin1_danish_ci. So, I created a new database as utf-8, exported my database, changed all the fields to utf-8_danish_ci in a text editor. I ran this exported file into my new database. It worked fine, my site is back up but... Nothing changed! The characters are still displaying incorrectly.

Is it okay to just switch the collation of these "fields" (what are they called??) in a text editor?

And, of course... anything else I should try to narrow it down?

[cr33dog]

So, I created a new database as utf-8

How are you creating the database - in cpanel, etc?

What options for character set (collation?) are you given when you make a new database?

Is it possible to install software on your host? I use phpMyAdmin to access the mysql databases directly - if you can install it (or it's already installed), it might give you a clue to what character sets are available.

Chris