It's better to write in public, I mentioned PM only for URL.
Let's see things.
- We have a SMF ISO installation, originally in English ISO-8859-1.
- Database tables and text fields are in latin1_swedish_ci.
- Later Greek UTF-8 instead of Greek (window-1253) was added and forum was used extensively in this language.
- When Greek language was used data was stored as UTF-8 in latin1_swedish_ci tables.
To correct things we must convert to UTF-8. It's a procedure that might not finish properly. Some mods may conflict so it's better to do it without them.
Steps (if other software is bridged with SMF additional steps might be needed).
1. Download SMF 1.1.14 (this is your version) UPGRADE (Not Update or Install) and Greek UTF-8 1.1.14 to a dir in your PCfrom
http://download.simplemachines.org/?archive;version=62 , Greek UTF-8 in page 3.
2. Put the forum in English (ISO-8859-1.) default language and maintenance mod.
3.
Backup SMF dir and database, so we can go back if something goes wrong.
4. Upload the content of SMF 1.1.14 Upgrade and Greek UTF-8 with FTP in SMF dir in the server or upload and unpack with CP File Manager, if available. Unpack usually overwrites old files but this is not always the case.
5. Run upgrade.php with your browser. Use English language. Remember to delete file upgrade.php after the procedure finishes. The Upgrade will delete file changes made by mods. Check the upgrade. If everything seems OK go to next step.
6. Using English go to Admin -> Forum Maintenance -> Forum Maintenance - General Maintenance:
Convert the database and data to UTF-8 <- Click here
You will see after text
Data character set | : UTF-8 <- Input UTF-8 |
Database character set | : ISO-8859-1 |
Convert data and database to | : UTF-8 |
Greek are stored as UTF-8, English ISO-8859-1 has no significant difference with UTF-8.
Proceed to conversion. You may have to wait for quite some time. Don't rush things.
ADD ON: ATTENTION. This is a special case, so we select UTF-8. In usual cases the selection for converting a Greek SMF forum to UTF-8 is windows-1253.If the procedure finishes correctly check the forum. If an error occurs report it.
There are a few more steps but number 6 is the critical procedure. If everything worked as expected you should have converted to UTF-8. Greek messages should show correctly with English language selected.
7. Go to PhpMyAdmin and check SMF database tables. Field text must have been set to utf8_general_ci collation. Table collation may not have been set, can be done manually with PhpMyAdmin.
8. To complete the conversion we go to and run "Convert HTML-entities to UTF-8 characters".
9. If everything seems to be OK either install again the mods or upgrade to SMF 2.0. The latter might require another theme and some of the mods might not be available.