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You are here: Home » non-UTF8 Character Like  Removal From WordPress Posts

By Abhishek Ghosh October 2, 2015 10:16 pm Updated on October 2, 2015

non-UTF8 Character Like  Removal From WordPress Posts

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First, please read the full story, then do whatever you want. Do not run commands or do action without reading the full thing. After changing Host or switching to MariaDB, weird characters may appear. Here is Details on non-UTF8 Character Like  Removal From WordPress. First, you must understand what is UTF-8. There are standard websites on UTF-8. The initial versions of WordPress databases were created using the latin1 character set and the latin1_swedish_ci collation. WordPress started from a fork of another free software.

 

Weird Latin Character Removal From WordPress : You did it versus some bugs did it

 

Some has MEANING. Some has no meaning (= blank space). Â, ​ has no meaning. Without any reason appearance is basically not your error. Such characters need simple removal. But, meaningful characters need replacement.

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– means —
• means -
… means …
“ means “
†means ”
‘ means ‘
’ means ’
— means –

– type stuffs mean that either you did it or some software did it. Finding the reason may be important for such case. It can be a pointing symptom towards breech in security. Characters like Â, ​ are innocent killers.

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non-UTF8 Character Like  Removal From WordPress Posts

There are very difficult article written in WordPress doc :

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https://codex.wordpress.org/Converting_Database_Character_Sets

 

Weird Latin Character Removal From WordPress : Commenting Out 2 Lines From wp-config is Not Easy Matter

 

Most commonly advised method to get rid of the weird Latin characters from old posts is to simply commenting out these two lines (2nd & 4th lines in the below snippet) from wp-config.php file :

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/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

As you can see there are two matter – collation and the UTF-8 matter. Even it is written – “Don’t change this if in doubt.”

Yes, it does affect the whole database like a sci-fi story. Actually, wp-config.php file is not exactly easy thing. BUT, such changes may empty a Plugin’s all fields which you used for customization of the theme. Genesis Simple Hooks is one such plugin which get affected. The collation part is not easy.

You can test by simply commenting out these two lines from wp-config.php file, but you must have a full database backup.

It is better to create a database with the backup of your database with wired characters from SSH or whatever you use to administer the backend. In case of devastation, you will first change those two commenting out lines from wp-config.php file to working lines and then use the backup database details. It is very easy to take backup and create new database from SSH :

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# for localhost database
mysqldump -h localhost -u root -p yourdatabasename > backedupdatabase.sql
# for database over network/other server; 1It is 0.0.0.91 is an example IP
mysqldump -h 10.0.0.91 -u root -p yourdatabasename > backedupdatabase.sql
# login for localhost mysql/mariadb
mysql -u root -h localhost -p
# username is the database username
mysql -u username -h 10.0.0.91 -p
CREATE DATABASE backUPdb2015;
use backUPdb2015;
\. backedupdatabase.sql
exit;

WE CLEARLY AGAINST THIS METHOD OF COMMENTING OUT. We can not see or control on what is happening. The problem is with only content of posts & pages.

 

Weird Latin Character Removal From WordPress : Checking php.ini and Nginx declaration

 

In ideal settings, your HTML source code of web page with fault should be lacking the UTF-8 declaration. In such case, you should enable default char set as UTF-8 from php.ini file (search default_charset in php.ini of cli and fpm) and Nginx’s nginx.conf file. These are useless works, we tested, they are probably a wastage a time for WordPress. Problem is difficult in nature.

 

Weird Latin Character Removal From WordPress : Best is Running Query on MySQL/MariaDB Database

 

First you need to find out which characters are appearing. You possibly have Google Search your website. Search with the character copied from the post you noticed to be funny with Google search. It is practical. Yeah, in one day Google may not spider all, but it is the best way. You may allow more days to see more funny characters. When we will say to run :

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UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'Â', '');

it will mean – replace  with nothing. But if you have – â€, then you should run :

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UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'â€', '”');

Login to database server :

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# login for localhost mysql/mariadb
mysql -u root -h localhost -p
# username is the database username for remote db with 10.0.0.91 IP
mysql -u username -h 10.0.0.91 -p
# commands
show databases;
use backUPdb2015;
# may be you alter once to utf8
ALTER TABLE wp_posts CHARACTER SET utf8;
# Replace - we used  as an example funny Latin character
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'Â', '');
# change â with your abnormal one and run the command
# Replace - we used †as an example to convert it to ”
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'â€', '”');
exit;

Full output will be like this :

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mysql -u backUPdb2015 -h 10.0.0.91 -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 2629
Server version: 5.5.44-MariaDB-1ubuntu0.14.04.1-log (Ubuntu)
 
Copyright (c) 2000, 2015, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
 
MariaDB [(none)]> use backUPdb2015;
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A
 
Database changed
MariaDB [backUPdb2015]> ALTER TABLE wp_posts CHARACTER SET utf8;
Query OK, 6694 rows affected (4.02 sec)
Records: 6694  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0
 
MariaDB [backUPdb2015]> UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'Â', '”');
Query OK, 3125 rows affected (3.62 sec)
Rows matched: 6694  Changed: 3125  Warnings: 0
 
MariaDB [backUPdb2015]> UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'â€', '');
Query OK, 430 rows affected (1.46 sec)
Rows matched: 6694  Changed: 430  Warnings: 0

Notice it :

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Rows matched: 6694  Changed: 3125  Warnings: 0

simply commenting out these two lines from wp-config.php file would force all ignoring Warning.

There is no other shortcut. You may need to repeat it later or manually edit 1-2 old posts.

Finding more shortcut may vanish some posts, some posts may do paranormal 301 redirection towards its category. With few posts (with 500 posts) that can be easy. But with mammoth sized database like that of us with 5K posts, it is like buying few pounds of RDX and keeping it in own kitchen for fun.

Tagged With examples of utf-8 , non utf 8 characters list , non utf-8 character list , non utf-8 characters

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Abhishek Ghosh

About Abhishek Ghosh

Abhishek Ghosh is a Businessman, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Author and Blogger. You can keep touch with him on Twitter - @AbhishekCTRL.

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About This Article

Cite this article as: Abhishek Ghosh, "non-UTF8 Character Like  Removal From WordPress Posts," in The Customize Windows, October 2, 2015, January 26, 2021, https://thecustomizewindows.com/2015/10/non-utf8-character-like-a-removal-from-wordpress-posts/.

Source:The Customize Windows, JiMA.in

 

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