Hi,

This is for all who install their Umbraco on MySQL platform and use a non-English charachter sets.

The missing part of the pazzle I believe is an old bug in Umbraco which has not been addressed yet, basically its just adding the entry "Charset=utf8" to your web.config

    <add key="umbracoDbDSN" value="server=x.x.x.x;database=db-name;user id=user-name;password=password;datalayer=MySql;Charset=utf8" />

The problem is a bit more complicated however. The reason is that you can change it after it is created in your web.config during installation and the database was aleady created.

Howto resolve:

add the charset entry to your web.config connection string as described above.

run the following SQL on your umbraco db after installation  and before you add anything else!, either thru phpmyadmin if your hosting service gives you the tool, or thru any other MySQL client available to you.

ALTER TABLE cmscontent DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmscontenttype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmscontenttypeallowedcontenttype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmscontentversion DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmscontentxml DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsdatatype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsdatatypeprevalues DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsdictionary DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsdocument DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsdocumenttype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmslanguagetext DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsmacro DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsmacroproperty DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsmacropropertytype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsmember DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsmember2membergroup DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsmembertype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmspreviewxml DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmspropertydata DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmspropertytype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsstylesheet DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmsstylesheetproperty DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmstab DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmstagrelationship DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmstags DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmstask DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmstasktype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE cmstemplate DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracoapp DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracoapptree DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracodomains DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracolanguage DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracolog DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbraconode DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracorelation DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracorelationtype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracouser DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracouser2app DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracouser2nodenotify DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracouser2nodepermission DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracousergroup DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracouserlogins DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE umbracousertype DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

HTH,

Gal Nitzan