Odd charachters - database collation?

[Peter Knight]

Hi guys

I had to uninstall a few Modules today and noticed that some of my pages now display weird characters as a result of this.

For example, this is displaying as...

Quote

Mike's knowledge of 

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Mike’s knowledge of

I understand a tiny about databases and this may be something to do with the Database Type and Collation?

Currently I have 

Type = MYISAM

Collation = utf8_general_ci

I've used this setup before and never had these issues.

Can anyone advise? I realise there are tons of StackOverflow topics covering this but was hoping for a super-simple instructions for a non database guy.

 

Thanks

 

 

[FrancisChung]

Have you tried using a different collation?

I know this isn't what you wanted exactly, but this article gives you a very good background into issues you're having.

https://www.blueboxcloud.com/insight/blog-article/getting-out-of-mysql-character-set-hell

[FrancisChung]

Another thing you could do is to reinstall the modules, one by one, until the problem goes away. 

Try and identify which module(s) is affecting this,  you could have a quick search and scan for certain keywords like collation etc and see if anything comes up that might give you a clue?

[LostKobrakai]

Are you sure it's the db and not any of your php files or incorrect html encoding?

[Peter Knight]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone and @FrancisChung for the link.

I eventually solved this the hard way by manually correcting all the foreign characters. As it was a live site and in use I didn't have the luxury of gradually eliminating each Module or a more methodical approach.