Specifying the database encoding in the site scripts when using cPanel hosting and control panel

By default, the global MySQL encoding on shared hosting servers is set "cp1252 West European (latin1) ", this is a feature of the control panel cPanel.

To specify the encoding of your site for displaying it in the browser, go to "Files → File Manager "

Let's go to "public_html " folder.

By default, the ".htaccess " file is hidden. So let's click on the "Settings" button and put a tick mark next to "Show hidden files (dotfiles) ".

Next, select our .htaccess and click "Edit ".

In the window that will appear let's click "Disable encoding check " and click "Edit ".

Let's specify the following values at the beginning of the file:

• If we want to use UTF-8 encoding

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 

• If we want to use Windows-1251 encoding

AddDefaultCharset WINDOWS-1251 

Then you can click "Save changes ".

Now go to our site and clear the browser cache by pressing "Ctrl + F5" or "Ctrl + R ". The encoding should change.

---

It is also worth checking which encoding is used in your database. To do this let's go into the database management utility "Databases → phpMyAdmin "

Open the desired database by clicking on its name on the left, and go to "Operations "

In the Compare field, set the same encoding as used on the site.

Now clear browser cache by pressing "Ctrl + F5" or "Ctrl + R " and check how the site displays.

---

Also you need to check the encoding when requesting data in your site scripts and specify the required encoding For example for UTF-8.

mysql_query ("set_client='utf8'");
`` mysql_query ("set character_set_results='utf8'");
mysql_query ("set collation_connection='utf8_general_ci'");
mysql_query ("SET NAMES utf8");