An easy way to change the collation if you are cloning your website to another server using Akeeba backup is to use the setting > Fine settings > Force Utf8
Change Collation from latin1_swedish_ci to utf8_general_ci using Akeeba backup
Reply
Category Archives: MySQL – phpMyAdmin
Change mysql database collation from latin1_swedish_ci to utf8_general_ci
If you created your site in with a specific collation language and need to change it you can use this great tool to change all the fields:
Download Phoca Changing Collation Tool
Unzip the zip file and copy the folder ‘tool_phoca_changing_collation’ into your server (localhost) root. Run the index.php script included in the ‘Collation’ folder. Add the following information into the form:
* Database hostname (e.g. localhost)
* Database username
* Database password
* Database name
* Database collation (add here the collation you want to have for the database, all tables and all columns in all tables.
Please, run this script only if you know what you do. If you have an extensive database, you must change the script execution time in your php settings, because 30 seconds to execute this script can be not enough.
How can I change my MySQL database collation?
Usually when you are using foreign characters or multilingual sites (Joomfish for Joomla) you should change your MySQL collation in order to solve problems with encodings. The most common case is to change your MySQL collation from latin1_swedish_ci to utf8_general_ci.
This can be done by using phpMyAdmin:
1. Enter your cPanel and click on the phpMyAdmin icon in the Databases box.
2. Select the database you wish to manage from the drop-down menu on the left
3. Click on the Operations tab in the top menu of your phpMyAdmin
4. At the bottom of the page you will see the collation option. You can now select a collation from the drop down menu and click on the Go button.
Please note that after your change the collation of a database only the new tables will be created with the new collation. All other tables remain with the collation, they were initially created.