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Asked: 2026-05-16T05:14:43+00:00

I’m trying to switch my site over to UTF-8 completely, so I don’t have

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I’m trying to switch my site over to UTF-8 completely, so I don’t have to deal with utf8_encode() & utf8_decode() functions.

I have the collation of my tables set properly, and I’m temporarily using the query SET NAMES utf8 to override the my.cnf file.

My question is — there are a ton of character set and collation variables in my.cnf, and I suspect that some ought to be left alone… which ones should I change to achieve the effect of SET NAMES utf8?

(The collation of my tables is utf8_unicode_ci.)

character_set_client | latin1 |
character_set_connection | latin1 |
character_set_database | latin1 |
character_set_filesystem | binary |
character_set_results | latin1 |
character_set_server | latin1 |
character_set_system | utf8 |

collation_connection | latin1_swedish_ci |
collation_database | latin1_swedish_ci |
collation_server | latin1_swedish_ci |
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Well, collation is primarily for sorting, so unless you’re storing a lnaguage with specific sorting needs, utf8_unicode_ci should be fine.

    The character_set_* values are used for all other string operations internally – value checks in places like WHERE clauses or IF/CASE statement, string functions like CHAR_LENGTH(), REPLACE(), SUBSTRING() – that sort of stuff.

    Generally speaking, they should all be the same (in this case, utf8) except for filesystem – I’d recommend keeping that at binary unless you have a specific need to move away from that.

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