[jc93]

Good day to everyone

I had just set up a WordPress with buddypress. And I realize that when I post something at the Forum. I will facing the encoding issue. My Simplified Chinese will automatic turn into “???” Even the comments in the forum also the same. (look at the screenshoot: http://www.gaoyang-debate.com/books/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Screen-shot-2010-09-28-at-8.29.57-PM.png ) This issue only face in forum. May I know what’s the real reason that make it like that? And what’s the solution. Urgent!

Thank You!

[thelandman]

@jc93 Ensure that your site is using UTF-8 encoding.

[Paul Wong-Gibbs]

There’s a known issue where the bbPress tables don’t install as UTF8. I’m not sure if it’s a BuddyPress bug or a bbPress bug. Either way, the solution is to convert those tables’ encoding in your database. Be sure to backup first.

[jc93]

@ Paul , Thanks! How can I convert those tables encoding? Any solution to let me have a look?

[cliffxuan]

jc93, I had the same problem and just sorted it out. It’s been two months since your post, and I guess you might have found the answer already, but I’ll type the answer here anyway.

Apparently it’s a collation(encoding) setting thing in the bdd_bb_xxx (bdd_bb_posts, bdd_bb_topics, bdd_bb_forums, etc) tables. If you you use phpMyAdmin, you can select the table and then go to the “Structure” tab. In the “Collation” column, your table is probably set to something like ‘latin1_swedish_ci’. Click the edit button, and then change it to ‘utf8_general_ci’. You probably need to change all of columns with the wrong collations in all the bdd_bb_xxx tables, however, bdd_bb_posts and bdd_bb_topics are the main two tables. After you have done the change, your can use Simplified Chinese in all the new posts, but this WON’T fix your old posts, as their data has been corrupted since you entered it at the first time and cannot be fixed by any means.

You should be able to use sql query ‘alter table alter column …’ to achieve the same result.

[imjscn]

@cliffxuan, thanks for the tip!
I’ve been searching for a solution but no luck till read your post. Now I’ve got things showing correctly.
By the way, I think bp developers can solve the problem by watching the difference between activity update and forum post. Activity pages can show things correctly without the setting of utf8_general-ci while forum pages can’t.
Anyway, now I got things right, thanks again