Character encoding error and disappearing fields after php version change

• Unai

• January 29, 2016 at 11:02 pm

Hi,

I recently changed my server php version to 7.0, but then I went back to 5.6 after an issue with another plugin. After this, some of my fields disappeared, and the rest (texts and text areas) they all have a character encoding error where all special characters (á, º, €, etc) are now “á”, “º”, “€”, etc.

I sadly don’t have any hope in recovering all my data, but at least I’d like to know why did this happen so I can avoid making the same mistake again.

I don’t know much about php or mysql, so I can’t understand why changing the php version corrupts the database.

I hope someone can throw some light into this.

Thanks!

• James

• April 9, 2016 at 4:51 pm

Hi @unai

Could you please check your database if the saved values have the weird encoding too? If they are, could you please check the collation of the tables. I believe the right collation should be “utf8mb4_unicode_ci”.

It’s possible that your PHP7 had a setup that changes the encoding. The best way would be asking your hosting about it. Also, please backup your website first before you change your server setup.

Thanks!