Database character set default configuration

[anrghg]

The file wp-config-sample.php suggests to configure the database charset to utf8. The origin of the file seems unknown, its traceability starts 8 years ago, but it most probably predates the year 2010 and was not updated when MySQL released support for actual UTF-8 in 2010.

In MySQL, utf8 is a proprietary charset that only supports the Basic Multilingual Plane of Unicode, as it is limited to 3 bytes, but in UTF-8, characters from U+10000 on take up 4 bytes (starting at F0 90 80 80).

So in MySQL, utf8 is a misnomer for utf8mb3, while the real UTF-8 encoding, that utf8 should be but is not, is labeled utf8mb4.

[Presskopp]

There is a function to determine the best charset/collation.

See ​https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/3d623995a8d070e608f4ff297512799cf89bb2c0/wp-includes/wp-db.php#L757-L764

So it is ok as it is.

[Otto42]

Also, this is the meta.trac. Issues with core should be made in core.trac.wordpress.org instead.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Hi there, welcome to WordPress Trac! Thanks for the ticket.

Just noting that there is already a ticket on Core Trac for this: ​#WP48285.

[anrghg]

Thanks to everybody for replies.

Sorry for not retrieving before.