smf 2.1.3 Collation

[Ruben Rocha]

Using mysql 8 with smf 2.1.3 what Collation should I use.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Default collation for 2.1 is utf8_general_ci.

[Ruben Rocha]

That is what I was  using on a older mysql version.
It is not available to select on mysql 8
The reason for the question is the host wants to migrate me to php 8 and mysql 8

[Sesquipedalian]

utf8_general_ci still exists in MySQL 8, but it might show up as utf8mb3_general_ci.

However, if you understand what you are doing and you need to manually configure your character set and collation in your database anyway, then you might as well set everything to use utf8mb4, and then change value of the $db_mb4 value in SMF's Settings.php file from false to true. In a future version of SMF, utf8mb4 will become the default.

[shawnb61]

SMF cannot support UTF8MB4 yet until some index/db and code changes are made.  An install will fail.  Also manually changing collations to utf8mb4 will fail for the same reasons.

It should be safe to set the db default to utf8mb3_general_ci prior to install.  Let SMF set the defaults for everything else, no need to update Settings.php.

[Ruben Rocha]

Thank you all for the response.
I will try the UTF8MB3