Encoding problem converting from phpBB 2

[mottaguedes]

Hello All,

I have an issue when converting from my old phpBB 2 board.
This is a portuguese board and after conversion, on my phpBB 3 board, I cannot see the accentuaded characters, all is messed up.

Here are my encoding settings right now:

Old phpBB 2 board:
Database tables: utf8_unicode_ci
pt/lang_main.php: iso-8859-1
en/lang_main.php: utf-8

New phpBB 3 board:
Database tables: utf8_bin
(I don't know the corresponding file to lang_main.php in the new board)


Can anyone help me regarding this? What changes to tables and files should I do before or after teh conversion?

Many thanks!

[marianave]

Hi!
I think I have the same problem.
I just converted my site grom phpbb2 to phpbb 3.0.12, and everything looks fine except from some special characters.

For example I get problems with the ñ, ¿, ¡, á, é, í, ó, ú, etc

I see them with strange symbols such as:
¿, é, ñ, etc

Maybe this is because my forum was in Spanish and this one is in English, or maybe it is an encoding problem.

What do you think and how can I fix it?

Thanks!

[marianave]

Actually, I just downloaded and installed the Spanish language pack and the problem persists. So I think it must be encoding-related.
What I think I'll do, is to find and replace text in the database tables. I'm planning on using this tutorial for it.

http://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/fin ... ress-site/
Maybe that can help you too!

[marianave]

I almost did it!

I run the following SQL querries on tables phpbb3_forums, phpbb3_topics, phpbb3_users and
phpbb3_posts:

UPDATE phpbb3_users SET username = REPLACE ( username, 'ñ', 'ñ');
UPDATE phpbb3_users SET username = REPLACE ( username, 'ó', 'ó');
UPDATE phpbb3_users SET username = REPLACE ( username, 'í', 'í');
UPDATE phpbb3_users SET username = REPLACE ( username, 'ú', 'ú');
UPDATE phpbb3_users SET username = REPLACE ( username, 'á', 'á');
UPDATE phpbb3_users SET username = REPLACE ( username, 'é', 'é');
UPDATE phpbb3_users SET username = REPLACE ( username, '¿', '¿');
UPDATE phpbb3_users SET username = REPLACE ( username, '¡', '¡')

I did it for all the variables (columns) where special characters were present. However, there are still these characters on some places and I don't know how to replace them, for example in the forums descriptions.

Does anyone know how can I modify this text?
On the MYSQL tables, instead of the text itself I see for "forum_desc" values such as "[BLOB - 51 B]"
I don't know where the real text is, or how to find and edit these entries.

Anyone can help?
Thank you in advance!

[marianave]

Solved!
Here's how to do it:

-In PHPmyadmin Open the table where the BLOB info is
-Go to the "Structure" tab
-Change the desired column from utf8_bin to utf8_General_ci (using the "edit" pencil)
-The text will show!
-Search and replace as exemplified in the previous post
-Change the column back from utf8_General_ci tp utf8_bin

That's all!
It worked for me, I hope it works for you too