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Wordpress Weird Symbols...What the heck?

Posted by DocNicole • 10/03/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: weird symbols, wordpress

We can't seem to figure out what the deal is with all the weird symbols I am getting since we upgraded Wordpress to 2.6.2 It seems like anything that was pasted from microsoft word, and anything that has quotation marks has been converted in to these weird symbols:

Â©Kitchen Table Medicine â„¢, LLC

Has anyone else had experience with this? I am contacting my new hosting company to see if the problem is on their end, but I am worried it is a problem with Wordpress and I am going to have to go in and hand edit every single blog post...what a nightmare!

Time Thief said to do this: >dashboard ->settings-> scroll to WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically make sure the checkbox is marked click save changes. If that does not help then go to Dreamhost support and tell them about the quotation marks all appearing in ASCI & see if it's on their end.

But, I can't find that option in the settings...

ugh...this is so frustrating!

Any help would be appreciated.

Doc
kitchentablemedicine.com if you care to check out the mess.

User Comments

10/03/08

PetLvr

First of all - you shouldn't be pasting anything into the WRITE box from microsoft word.

If you go to your visual icons - click kitchen sink (last on first line on right side) to get 2nd row with the "W" icon. Copy/paste the information into there - it will strip the bad code away

[reply]
1. 10/03/08
  
  DocNicole
  
  Thanks! So should I do this for each post if we aren't able to clear it up through the hosting company? Seems pretty time consuming.
  
  Ya--ya--- I know *bows head in embarrassment* I know I shouldn't have been copying from word, but six months ago when I did that I didn't know anybetter...the problem though is this error is occurring in posts that were never pasted from word. Oy vei!
10/03/08

DaneMorgan

It looks like something is going on with the "magic quotes" stuff in the WordPress texturizer. It is not properly translating and saving the UTF-8 codes for the "curly" quotes it converts your " and ' charaters into by default.

There are a couple of plugins that disable the texturizer (or just portions of it). But for these posts you're probably going to have to edit to put the characters back in correctly at this point.

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10/04/08

PetLvr

Here's a tip I just found via 'net search, how to "POSSIBLY" fix this ...
www.lancelhoff.com/2007/08/30/problems-with-post-text-after-upgrading-to-wo...

ow to fix the strange characters and corrupted text displayed on WordPress pages and posts:

1. Access your WordPress directory via ftp
2. Locate and open the WordPress wp-config.php file. Find and delete the following two lines:

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8?);
define('DB_COLLATE'=, ");

3. Save your changes and go view your site

If all went well, the garbled, weird and funny characters should be gone.

I haven't tried this - I might actually! I've got so many sites with a few of these funny characters... I thought it was from my upgrade from 1.5 version to 2.1 version I did in error in one step years ago.

[reply]
10/28/08

SolReka

@Petvlr & Dane

Guys, I have been encountering the same problem as Doc.

Just posted a discussion requesting help. Perhaps you guys may shed some light on this most bizarre problem.

Here is the link to the post on weird symbols.

www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/weird-symbols-appearing-in-blog-please-he...

My head hurts :-(

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