Remove Unwanted Characters from WordPress Post Content after WordPress MySQL Migration

Today I learned… how to remove unwanted characters like â€ and Á from WordPress post content using a MySQL query.mysql_logo

Backstory: I recently migrated a blog from shared hosting to a VPS. This experience alone could fuel TILCode content into 2024, but this particular “TIL” article is about a curious character encoding artifact that occurred as I exported the WordPress MySQL data and imported it elsewhere: Á and â€ symbols everywhere!

Removing these unwanted symbols from my WordPress posts required running a few queries on my MySQL databases. Here are the steps I used.

(And if there’s a better/easier way to do this, please let me know in the comments. This was my first foray into MySQL queries, but it got the job done.)

Step 1: Log into PhpMyAdmin

Access phpmyadmin through your cPanel or yourdomain.com/phpmyadmin – access varies by host and setup

Step 2: Navigate to the SQL tab and change collation

Click on the “PhpMyAdmin” logo so that you’re at the “root” level (and not inside a database – this might work from inside a database, but I did it from outside).

Click on the SQL tab.

mysql_button

Here, you’ll get a large window in which you can type queries – operations you perform on your data. 

mysql_queries

The first query to run is one that will set the character encoding type. 

ALTER DATABASE your_db_name_here DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

I learned this from JesseWeb’s helpful tutorial on resolving WordPress character issues, but his code didn’t work for me as-is (I suppose that’s not surprising considering his guide is nearly 5 years old). I had to remove the quotes from the database name.

Your query will look like the image below. Be sure to replace your_db_name_here with your database’s actual name (look in the left column for your db names).

Click the “Go” button on the right to run the query.

mysql_queries_in_place

Step 3: Remove unwanted characters from existing posts

For this query, you need to navigate to the actual database itself. Click on its name on the left.

navigate_to_mysql_database

Click on the SQL tab. Now the helper text says that queries are run on the database you selected.

queries_inside_db

Enter this query string to replace all instances of â€ with an empty space:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, '“', '');

Repeat the query for every unwanted character. Note also that you can stack ’em up in the query window like so and run ’em all at once:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, '“', '');
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'Á', '');
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'foo', 'bar');

You may also need to clean up comments. You can do that with:

UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_content = REPLACE(comment_content, 'Á', '');

See shadez’s question on WordPress.org for more examples – his example was instrumental in helping me understand this issue.

And with that, all the unwanted characters are gone. Phew!

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