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Suddenly I Have strange letters or what i may be called in english on my forum,
Awhile ago I upgraded to 7.5.9 and a couple weeks later I upgraded the PHP version from 5.3.27 to PHP Version 5.4.37
Do you have any Ideas what it cold be? There are lots of � � � in the postings now.

Thanks
Morgan

This is an example from an advertiser
Quote
M.A.P. Cycle�wants to be the First company so totally dedicated to the continuation of our Vintage British motorcycles and to their riders that we are crazy enough to offer Any-Thing like this.�� The phrase: �we eat, sleep, ride, talk, breath, dream, live and love British motorcycles� has never rung so true.

We are so confident in the value and the need for a better, more reliable, lifelong part that we are offering a "Buy-Back" program for the return of ANY manufacturer's billet alloy connecting rods toward the purchase of any of the M.A.P. Cycle series of 4340 forged connecting rod sets.�

see

http://www.britbike.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=563673

Last edited by Morgan; 03/10/2015 2:52 PM.

Morgan Johansson
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It's from the character set on your forum; likely the posts where made with the old character set "iso-8859-1" but the default as of 7.5.9 is "UTF-8", basically the data in the database is one character set whereas it's being read out as another, and the two allow different types of characters. You can either suffer (muahaha) with the old posts having some quirks, or change the character set via the language files to what they where before.

If you feel like a little reading, I'd check out The Absolute Minimum Every Software...Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!).

Edit: I've added an entry to the Wiki: How to Fix Black Diamonds


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The following should get you taken care of -

1. Go to: Control Panel » Languages

2. Click on the "Language Editor" tab.

3. In the "Search String" field, type "UTF-8" and press "Go" button.

4. There may be one or two items that are shown. "myfeeds.php" and/or "generic.php" -- Click "Edit" next to "generic.php"

5. At the very top, you will see "CHARSET" highlighted in RED. Replace "UTF-8" with "ISO-8859-1" -- !!do not add any spaces or line-feed before/after this text!!

6. Scroll to the bottom and click on the "Update Language File" button. It does not matter which of the two buttons you click on, they both do the same thing.

Done.


Post a reply after you're done, to let us know how it goes for you.

NOTE: Its actually more simple than how the directions make look, I've just spread out each instruction to make it as basic as possible for anyone else who may stumble across this post.


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So what happens
before it was "iso-8859-1"
now 7.5.9 is "UTF-8",

Will some of the new postings using UTF-8 screw up 8859-1 when I change

IF I change it back to 8859-1then in next upgrade it will return to UTF-8 and I'll have to reset ea time...

Just thinking out loud.. really what would the best thing to do?

Is "�" the same character as one or could it be different characters in the old 8859-1?
If it means one thing how about replacing the "�" with another character in the database..


Morgan Johansson
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The changes I've outlined above, just instruct how the browser is display the page. It doesnt change anything stored in your database.


As an example to present things in their most simplest form:
Think of the UTF-8 character set as a language, trying to verbally read another language called, ISO-8859-1. And lets say that this ISO-8859-1 language includes many accents. Every time UTF-8 comes across a accent character that it doesnt understand, it uses a "black diamond" to represent that character. Ultimately, just because it is being displayed as UTF-8 in this case, it doesnt change the ISO-8859-1 language being stored in your database.

Its like if you were to read a menu written in French and you couldnt pronounce the accents correctly, you would just use the "English" pronunciation skills (which you probably learned in grade school) that you already know, to pronounce those words. This would not change what is written on that French menu, but it would not sound like French when you are verbally pronouncing it.

Ideally, the best thing is to create your DB in UTF-8 from day one. This happens for new sites, but for sites that already have a solid foundation, such as yours, converting to UTF-8 and moving forward is ultimately the best solution. There is currently no script written to do this, but there is an extremely rough how-to guide on it.

Have a quick read through and look at the graphic on this page:
http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2012/02/unicode-over-60-percent-of-web.html

Last edited by id242; 03/11/2015 4:18 PM. Reason: added some links and more explanation

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In addition to the link I just posted above, have a quick read through the introductory paragraphs (before the TOC) of this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode

Originally Posted by Morgan
IF I change it back to 8859-1then in next upgrade it will return to UTF-8 and I'll have to reset ea time...

Just thinking out loud.. really what would the best thing to do?

To address this issue specifically:

That setting should not even be within the language file settings, it should be a site-configuration / primary-setting. It will be moved out of the language files and into the correct settings page with the next UBB.threads release. With that change, you may only need to verify that it is correctly set for your site ONCE (as it will be a new setting) and then not have to deal with it again.

I believe this is the correct way forward, unless someone can add more input to this discussion, to point out something I am not seeing.


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I agree completely; site settings should not be represented in language fields, they should be in the configuration file with the rest of the config entries.


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Hi I changed both files and it looks good see below but I have no clue if something else will not work.
Cheers
Morgan


Quote
M.A.P. Cycle wants to be the First company so totally dedicated to the continuation of our Vintage British motorcycles and to their riders that we are crazy enough to offer Any-Thing like this. The phrase: “we eat, sleep, ride, talk, breath, dream, live and love British motorcycles” has never rung so true.

We are so confident in the value and the need for a better, more reliable, lifelong part that we are offering a "Buy-Back" program for the return of ANY manufacturer's billet alloy connecting rods toward the purchase of any of the M.A.P. Cycle series of 4340 forged connecting rod sets.


Morgan Johansson
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PS I noticed that in the PHP Info it read ISO-8859-1 before so therefore I changed the two files


Quote
Directive Local Value Master Value
xxxxxx_encoding ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-1
xxxxxxnternal_encoding ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-1
xxxxxoutput_encoding ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-1




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Originally Posted by Morgan
Hi I changed both files and it looks good see below but I have no clue if something else will not work.
Cheers
Morgan

As previously stated, all that the change does is tell the user's browser (chrome/firefox/ie/safari..etc) how to read the page. It doesnt change any data/posts on your server at all.

Anything that your DB or PHP settings are displaying, is purely server-side. The instructions above are about how you want your pages to be displayed on the user-side.


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OK thanks for the info I get it now
Cheers
Morgan


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Guys

https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/256692/Re:_CP_>>_Portal#Post256692

My E-mail arrived for that forum as its on my watch list and the subject line was

Code
How do I? : CP >> Portal>> Portal layout >> External Island Instructions


BOOM !! Version v7.6.1.1
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Its been a little while since I changed back to ISO-8859-1

now after a while I see new strange characters see example

Quote
The tickets are £1 each,

see the Ã
Quote
1974 Norton 850 Commando custom VR880 replica Café Racer - Rolling Project
http://www.britbike.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=589106#Post589106


Any ideas ???


Morgan Johansson
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