em-dashes, ellipses

[chrispatchel]

Every em-dash, ellipsis, and apostrophe on my entire site turned into a question mark or: â€"
All new posts do the same as soon as you hit send. It's the same for all members using the site.

Can anyone help?

[Diego Andrés]

What version are you using?
What did you do before this started happening?

[chrispatchel]

SMF 2.0.19

I didn't do anything that I'm aware of. One day it was fine and the next day it wasn't.

[chrispatchel]

Correction:

SMF Package: SMF 2.0.18
Sources: 2.0.12
Default Templates: 2.0.14
Language Files: 2.0.18

I'm new at this so I have no idea what any of this means.

[Kindred]

According to that,  you are actually running 2.0.18

What language are you using?
Is it utf8?

What is the collation of the database?

[Doug Heffernan]

I didn't do anything that I'm aware of. One day it was fine and the next day it wasn't.

This looks like a collation issue to me. If that was working fine one moment and the next not, something must have caused it. As a rule of thumb, issues just don't happen out of nowhere.

[chrispatchel]

Default English

One thing that did happen prior: I inadvertently unlocked a setting (I forget which one) that allowed hackers to join as members. I deleted all of them and relocked that setting.   

[Doug Heffernan]

I inadvertently unlocked a setting (I forget which one) that allowed hackers to join as members.

There is no such setting in Smf a.f.a.i.k.

[chrispatchel]

Can someone explain "collation of the database" if that's the issue?

[Doug Heffernan]

Can someone explain "collation of the database" if that's the issue?

It's about how the database sorts and compares the characters, how the data in string values is stored and retrieved.For more have a look here:

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/adding-collation.html

[chrispatchel]

Is there anything a non rocket scientist like myself can do to solve the issue?

[Kindred]

You need to check
A- what is your forum set to.. utf8 or not
B- what is your database set to.

[chrispatchel]

No idea what the database is set to or where to find that info but under FORUM MAINTENANCE there's an option to:

"Convert the database and data to UTF-8"

Should I run that? And can I do so without screwing things up even more?

[Deaks]

you could do all this will do is convert the forum to utf8 it wont hurt if you do

[chrispatchel]

I've been using the site since 2013 without a problem so I don't see how utf-8 can all of sudden be an issue now.

[Deaks]

alot as changed in coding since 2013

[chrispatchel]

Might upgrading to a newer version solve the problem?

[Deaks]

moving to 2.1 may solve the problem, their is no guarantee, as i mentioned it wouldnt hurt to move to utf-8

If you do move to 2.1 I would suggest doing a test upgrade before and making sure mods etc you have will work, making sure you have the most up to date as you will loose them, and your theme.

[chrispatchel]

Ok, found this:

The Data character set: ISO-8858-1
Database character set: utf8mb3

[chrispatchel]

I just changed it to utf-8 and it made it even worse. em-dashes are now replace with: ââ,¬â€�