I had a problem with Turkish characters not displaying on my hosted WordPress web site and my web host tech support staff and I went through several versions of my trouble ticket before I got it straightened out.
By this time I had a mess in MySQL so I used:
phpMyAdmin >> localhost >> Settings and selected “Reset”
(You can reset all your settings and restore them to default values.)
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NO CHANGES were made to .htaccess
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I changed one item using File manager >> /www >> wp-config.php:
/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');
***WE CHANGED DB_COLLATE:***
define('DB_COLLATE', 'utf8');
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In WordPress we changed the character encoding (to UTF-8) in the dashboard:
Settings >> Reading “Encoding for pages and feeds” UTF-8
