Upgrading breaks all my accents

[svsanchez]

Hello, I have been upgrading several sites from WB 2.8.3 to 2.12.2, and everyone of them breaks the accented characters. So, I have to do an extra step each time and run SQL commands via phpMyAdmin to replace the meesed up characters, like:

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, '¿', '¿');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET description = Replace(description, 'á', 'á');

And so on, for each accented character and each module. It's not a problem for me as I already have the list of commands to replace the Spanish characters and run them all at once... HOWEVER, I have to upgrade a site which is also in RUSSIAN with cyrillic alphabet, and since I don't know Russian, if it breaks I won't know which commands to run to replace the messed up characters.

SO, MY QUESTIONS ARE:

1) Is there a way to prevent the characters from getting messed up BEFORE upgrading?

2) If not, does someone have a list of all the replacement commands for Russian, or could someone help me generate it? For example, this is what I use for the Pages Titles in Spanish:

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'á', 'á');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'é', 'é');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'í', 'í');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'ó', 'ó');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'ú', 'ú');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'ñ', 'ñ');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'Á', 'Á');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'É', 'É');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'Ó', 'Ó');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, 'Ú', 'Ú');

UPDATE wb_pages
SET page_title = Replace(page_title, '¿', '¿');

[svsanchez]

Hello, I still need a solution for upgrading my site in Russian, I just tried and it's worse than I thought because all the content from the WYSIWYG modules also get messed up, and it's not just some accented characters like in Spanish or French, but ALL the characters are changed. Here are 2 examples:

1. Header and content area

How it looks before upgrading:


How it looks after the upgrade:


2. Footer

How it looks before upgrading:


How it looks after upgrading:


Can someone please tell me how to prevent this from happening! The site is www.cemyk.org

Thank you...

[dbs]

Hi, the question what is the charset in the tables before upgrade.
We have a lot of postings for such problems. Normally you have to change this charcters one time and no problems in the future.

[ruebenwurzel]

Hello,

wich charset and kollation has your database? I recommand UTF8.

To change charset and collation isn't easy, you need some knowledge about databasehandling.

Basically the steps are the following:
1. Make a backup of the database (the one with the correct characters) => you got an .sql file
2. Open this .sql file with an Editor (e.g. Notepad++) and convert it to UTF8 => check if all characters are ok
3. Change your Database and all tables to the right charset and collation (with the database tool from your hoster, e.g. phpmyadmin)
4. Import the converted .sql backupfile
5. check config.php of WB if correct Charset is set (define('DB_CHARSET',      'utf8_unicode_ci')

I strongly recommand to do this only if you have the necessary knowlegdement. Failures could have the result, that your side didn't work anymore.

There exists in the Internet a lot of tools and scripts wich can do this job for you, but not all of them work correct. I would use those scripts only when i'm shure that they work correct. Best is to ask someone who have done this job before.

Matthias