Charset change

Noticed the shift to UTF-8 will be standard in new database installs, which is reflected in /languages/english.php (replacing iso-8859-1).

I assume the majority of current sites are using latin1/iso-8859-1, could the move to utf-8 cause any issues?

I actually would love to move/upgrade to utf-8 to solve Paypal problems returning corrupted non-English names and addresses, but I believe this has to be a manual task--correcting the corruptions caused by changing the encoding. Not something that could be part of the upgrade process correct?

The UPGRADE process does NOT convert any of your data to UTF8. And indeed you should keep your iso-8859-1 setting in YOUR existing english.php files if your site has been using that already.

Converting your database content is a completely separate topic and activity, which should only be done with a solid understanding of the MANY potential problems you might encounter when doing so.

UTF8 is set as database default in v1.5.0 ONLY FOR NEW INSTALLS without historical data.

Thanks for the confirmation.
I appreciate the warning regarding updating to utf8.

I recently change my char set to UFT8 as I needed to allow special foreign characters for addresses. The issues I have were related to Quotes, non breaking spaces and currency symbols. you get a black diamond with a question mark in the centre for all the characters that are not recognised. This was my fault for using MS Word to create the descriptions and easy populate to update stock. on the site the I replaced the following
Replace ’ with '
Replace ‘ with '
Replace ” with "
Replace “ with "
Replace – with -
Replace … with ...
Replace £ with £
Replace © with ©
Replace ™ with ™
Replace ® with ®
the hardest one was the non breaking space which I had to change in word the reload all the product details.

Don't know it that is helpful. Hopefully so!

Ps Don't forget you also need to change your PHP files.

brittainmark:

Ps Don't forget you also need to change your PHP files.

When you say you also need to change your PHP files what do you mean? Can you please clarify?

Thanks!

BlessIsaacola:

When you say you also need to change your PHP files what do you mean? Can you please clarify?

Thanks!

I use Eclipse as my PHP editor and each PHP files is stored with a character set. Also on the web server I use it stores all the PHP files with a character set. It was necessary for me to check all of the pages for the same codes/characters then save them with the new character set.