My WordPress Is Showing Symbols
WordPress, an open-source platform for blogging, is essentially a database on top of a Web server. All your posts are contained within the database, and if that becomes corrupt or if the database’s encoding changes, symbols show instead of words. There are many reasons why symbols would randomly appear in posts, each requiring a specific fix.
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Update WordPress
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Updating WordPress can resolve some issues or corruption. First, make sure you’re running the required versions of PHP and MySQL. If you use a hosting provider, it should provide this information and keep both current. Then back up your WordPress database. Next disable all plug-ins via the Manage Plug-ins page, since not all plug-ins are updated to work with current versions of WordPress. Finally, in the Tools Menu, select “Upgrade” or “Update.”
Database Encoding
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If you recently upgraded your WordPress blog from a version prior to 2.2, then your text may show strange symbols. The upgrade to WordPress version 2.2 and above set the encoding to UTF-8 value, when many blogs were still using Latin1. If the new values weren’t set properly when they were upgraded, then symbols would display instead of proper characters. To fix this, open the wp-config.php file with any text editor, such as Vim, Emacs, Pico or Notepad. Find and delete the lines: “define(’DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8’);” and “define(’DB_COLLATE’,”);”.
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WordPress Hacked
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If your WordPress blog has been hacked, then it could display strange symbols and random links. Change your password and secret keys through WordPress.org. Changing the secret keys in addition to the password will ensure that no unauthorized people are logged in to your WordPress. If you host WordPress on your own server, detect how the blog was hacked. If you use a hosting provider, it should have the information and fix it. Once the exploit has been fixed, replace the core WordPress files with new ones or restore from a backup you know to be safe. If there isn’t a good backup, you may need to delete and install your WordPress from scratch.
Search and Replace
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If the other solutions don’t work, then resolve the symbols by using a search and replace plug-in. These plug-ins will search your database for a particular string or character and replace it with a corrected one. Choose a plug-in that is recommended for the version of WordPress that you’re using. Upload the plug-in archive to the “wp-content/plugins” folder on the server with WordPress installed. Extract the plug-in. Then activate the plug-in on the plug-in screen. The new plug-in should be listed. Note that some plug-ins will indiscriminately change searches, even text that isn’t garbled. Back up your WordPress before using a search and replace plug-in.
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