Starting your forum with Unicode (UTF-8) is better than converting it later, so let’s talk about how you can start with Unicode.
- Before installing vBulletin, create your database as usual.
- Perform this query with a MySQL client like phpMyAdmin.
ALTER DATABASE `db_name` CHARACTER SET utf8;
Where db_name is the name of the database.
- The collation will be set to the default: utf8_general_ci
- Open your config.php and find:
// $config['Mysqli']['charset'] = 'utf8'; - Make sure it looks like this:
$config['Mysqli']['charset'] = 'utf8';
- Save config.php and upload it.
- Start installing your vBulletin as usual, and don’t forget to update your languages HTML charset via ACP.
Final note: MySQL versions prior to 4.1 don’t support charsets and collations.
Noticed this today, you will also need to edit the default language after the installation.
The default language is still set to report the iso code for the content encoding instead of utf-8.
Thanks elmuerte
Actually I mentioned that
What would happened when updating to the new vb version or installing e.g. Project Tools? Will installation files (new tables creation) be in conflict with the running-on-utf8 database?
No conflict is supposed to occur.
Regards
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I have done what you said.
Now I try to backup my database but “Arabic Letters” don’t appears right ..
what I can do ?
There must be something wrong. it may be your server configuration or your connection character set setting.
I’ve exactly all the steps you mentioned here but I’m getting strange characters in the email and when I try to log in it refuses and it’s not accepting my input…
I’m I missing soemthing?!!
You probably missed something.
What can that be?!!
I followed your instructions exactly…
The text at forum homepage looks correct, but if I submit an Arabic text to form it’s doesn’t accept it, I have to go to my database and get the strange character to login for example…
nevermind…. I just got it now…
Just One thing I hope you add, I think since the installation files are not encoded as UTF during install, so any Arabic character will be saved in a strange way…
What I think is.. it’s better to avoid writing any characters in Arabic during that stage untill the encoding is changed from the ACP…