I would like a Greek word (Ἀπὸ) to render on a page like it rendered right here. If I copy Ἀπὸ directly to a page via the Wordpress interface, it shows just fine in both the interface and on the actual page. However when I use some PHP to read it out of a MySQL table and add it to a page, it renders ??? instead of Ἀπὸ.

Before you think it is messed up in the database, it renders as expected in Sequel Pro. However I did notice something interesting in its interface. You can select "View Using Encoding..." If I select "UTF-8 Unicode BMP (utf8)" or "UTF-8 Full Unicode (utf8mb4)", it works. If I select "UTF-8 Unicode via Latin 1", I get ???.

The database encoding is: UTF-8 Unicode (utf8)

The database collation is: utf8_unicode_ci

The table reports the same encoding and collation.

If I view the source of the page that gives me "???" I see:

<meta charset='utf-8'>

What am I missing?

I would like a Greek word (Ἀπὸ) to render on a page like it rendered right here. If I copy Ἀπὸ directly to a page via the Wordpress interface, it shows just fine in both the interface and on the actual page. However when I use some PHP to read it out of a MySQL table and add it to a page, it renders ??? instead of Ἀπὸ.

Before you think it is messed up in the database, it renders as expected in Sequel Pro. However I did notice something interesting in its interface. You can select "View Using Encoding..." If I select "UTF-8 Unicode BMP (utf8)" or "UTF-8 Full Unicode (utf8mb4)", it works. If I select "UTF-8 Unicode via Latin 1", I get ???.

The database encoding is: UTF-8 Unicode (utf8)

The database collation is: utf8_unicode_ci

The table reports the same encoding and collation.

If I view the source of the page that gives me "???" I see:

<meta charset='utf-8'>

What am I missing?

• characters

1 Answer 1

wp-config.php includes scope for settings for "DB_CHARSET" and DB_COLLATE. Are those settings operative? How do they correspond to the your actual database settings.

If the config settings are operative, it might you might try it with them commented out.

Edit: On reflection/research, I would set the db_charset and db_collate settings.

There are other possibilities (such as making sure that the file is set to UTF-8 and not UTF-BOM). No doubt you have researched widely, but this question from 2012 resonated in terms of the db content appearing sound, but printing as "????". I refer you to "PHP MySQL Greek letters showing like ???? marks" where