Preaching to the UTF8 converted
With the dashboard nagging me to upgrade to WP 2.7, I decided that I might as well clear the UTF8 conversion issue first.
Doing it the hard way turned out to a bit of a disaster. It didn't help that the WP Codex entry was not written for people like me in mind. Unlike the WP Codex entry on Backing Up, there were no screen captures to guide the lost. The instructions lacked the kind of detail needed for those who want to be spoon-fed. Jargon and terminology were left unexplained. Overall, it was assumed that readers were familiar with mySQL. I don't know anything about mySQL - I did not even know the difference between a table and a column. orz
After I ran into some problems, I back-pedalled to square one. Thankfully my backup restored the Latin1 database without any glitches.
I then decided to take a risk with the plugin that Kabitzin used last year even though the plugin author only maintained it up to WP 2.2 and the relevant WP Forum threads have reported data corruption due to using the plugin.
So far it seems ok. The view in phpMyAdmin also showed that the collation has been changed to utf8_general_ci. I haven't to do any F&R yet. I'm really grateful to Kabitzin for writing and updating that UTF8 entry. Thanks, you're the best!!
After that, the WP 2.7 upgrade was also completely smoothly. For once, I was quite happy and eager to upgrade. Assuming the one-click upgrade tool works properly, it will make WP upgrades, with their irritating frequency, so much less of a chore for site owners. Though plugin and theme writers are probably still pulling their hair out.
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December 13th, 2008 - 22:55
Even a little corruption is probably worth it, considering how much easier the plugin makes it. Glad that it worked for you! You may want to check out the sanitizer just in case, as I had a handful of errors in comments (not posts) that were in different languages. In some cases I even had to surgically remove some moonspeak, but fortunately I can’t read it anyway!
It is a bit annoying that Wordpress/AutoMattic did not issue some kind of official conversion tool for UTF-8 considering it is their fault that older installs have this problem. It is akin to punishing your most loyal users for sticking with your product since the beginning.
On another topic, I am SURE now that blue is the most popular color by far for ice pops that need to be sucked on by anime girls.
December 14th, 2008 - 10:32
Ah I haven’t checked the comments yet. Yes, definitely will try out the sanitize plugin too.
re: ice pops. I wonder if that wasn’t just blue but Blue Hawaii?