problems with displaying russian language posts after moving to another hosting

[yaniss]

Hi,

need help. Just moved my SM forum to another hosting account (to godaddy) moved db and files, all is working fine, except posts that ware in russian language are displayed with damaged encoding.

What can be the problem, where to search for solution?

thanks and
best
Y.

[Kindred]

check that the database encoding is correct... check that the moved forum is using UTF-8

[yaniss]

Thanks, but where and how can I check that?

[Kindred]

in SMF, look in the server and language settings
for the mySQL, look in phpmyadmin...

[yaniss]

Forum is using English UTF-8 and sql uses utf8_unicode_ci

I even tried to switch the forum language to russian, then all of the UI elements ware in russian, but old posts that ware in russian was still in some wrong encoding

[Illori]

can you check your backup from the original database and see if you can read the posts correctly there?

[yaniss]

yes I could for sure, but the domain name is gone now and I can't see the forum any more, but till the last minute when I made backup all was working

[Illori]

did you physically check the backup sql file? it does not sound like you did.

[yaniss]

how can I check it?
I have the sql file on my pc

[Illori]

open it with a decent text editor like notepad++

[yaniss]

when opened with notepad, I can see parts of the text in russian

[Illori]

i said notepad++ not notepad

[yaniss]

yap can see the text with notepad++ as well

[Illori]

then check your database to see that you can see them in phpmyadmin or similar, if you cant then your import was not done correctly.

[yaniss]

Horay!
I made db restore not with godaddy tool, but with phpmysql and now text is displayed as it should be!!!

but there is another problem, all attachments and avatars are not displayed. I checked the files are on the ftp but forum can't see them

[MrPhil]

When importing a backup (.sql) file, you have to tell phpMyAdmin what encoding the file is in. If you don't, the default it uses is usually Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1). You would need to explicitly tell it that the backup is in UTF-8 (assuming that's what it is) when doing the import (restore), otherwise it will translate each character from what it thinks is Latin-1, to UTF-8, when you wanted no translation at all.

Note also that MySQL's default is Latin-1 encoding for the database -- you need to explicitly set it up as UTF-8 during installation, or change it before importing any data. Finally, language support files (English or Russian) and the overall page encoding need to be consistent with the database (all UTF-8 in your case).

[yaniss]

When importing a backup (.sql) file, you have to tell phpMyAdmin what encoding the file is in. If you don't, the default it uses is usually Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1). You would need to explicitly tell it that the backup is in UTF-8 (assuming that's what it is) when doing the import (restore), otherwise it will translate each character from what it thinks is Latin-1, to UTF-8, when you wanted no translation at all.

Note also that MySQL's default is Latin-1 encoding for the database -- you need to explicitly set it up as UTF-8 during installation, or change it before importing any data. Finally, language support files (English or Russian) and the overall page encoding need to be consistent with the database (all UTF-8 in your case).

thanks! this one I solved

now the attachment problem remains :S

[Illori]

try What is repair_settings.php?

[yaniss]

thanks, i already used this, and all setting seems to be correct
any other options on where should I look?

[Illori]

if the paths are correct and the files are on the server in the right spot there is no reason for them to not work.