WordPress instance shows improper characters instead of symbols, such as  â after migration to Plesk

Symptoms

• After importing a WordPress instance from another server to Plesk, the website shows characters such as  â. For example:

  This isâthe website content.Â

• The following line is present in the domain's wp-config.php file in Plesk > Domains > example.com > File Manager:

  define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Cause

Incorrect collation on some tables in the domain's database.

The Charset and Collation from the WordPress instance database example_db are set as follows:

# plesk db
MariaDB [psa]> use example_db;
MariaDB [example_db]> SELECT @@character_set_database, @@collation_database;
+--------------------------+----------------------+
| @@character_set_database | @@collation_database |
+--------------------------+----------------------+
| utf8 | utf8_general_ci |
+--------------------------+----------------------+

There are tables in the example_db database with a different collation than the one above, for example:

# plesk db -ne"SHOW TABLE STATUS FROM example_db" | grep latin
table1 ... latin1_swedish_ci
table2 ... latin1_swedish_ci

Resolution

1. Log into Plesk.

2. Go to Domains > example.com > File Manager.

3. Open the wp-config.php file and comment out the lines below by putting // at the beginning of the line as follows:

   //define('DB_COLLATE', '');
   ...
   //define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');