кодировка – Windows-1251 vs. UTF-8

Question:

I create websites using my own PHP engine developed around 2007, which has since gone through all sorts of modifications and improvements. The encoding remained the same – windows-1251. Should I switch to UTF-8? Almost all Russian and foreign websites use UTF-8 encoding.

What is the advantage of UTF-8 encoding over windows-1251, and is there any advantage at all?

And another question, please tell me how to correctly switch to UTF-8, including the MySQL database?

Answer:

  • Make a complete dump of the database, including the structure of the tables, in the old encoding.
  • Recode all pages of the site and a copy of the dump in UTF-8.
  • Change the default database encoding to UTF-8, comparison to utf8_general_ci . Delete all tables.
  • Upload the dump to UTF-8, specifying the encoding.
  • Of course, change the encoding to utf-8 in the headers of all pages on the site.

@mountpoint already said about the advantages of unicode.

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