Fixing WordPress character encoding issues: resolving special character display errors

A client reported that certain names containing apostrophes and accented characters were displaying incorrectly on their WordPress site. For example, the apostrophe in a name such as “O’Connor” appeared as a strange symbol or question mark. Our development team identified and resolved the issue by correcting how special characters were being processed and displayed by the site’s theme and database.

Issue background

The problem appeared when dynamic content pulled from the WordPress database was displayed on the front end. While the backend showed text correctly, names containing special characters became garbled once rendered on the live page. This behavior suggested that the issue was related to character encoding — the process that determines how text characters are stored and interpreted by browsers and databases.

Diagnosis

Our developers began by reviewing multiple layers that commonly cause encoding problems in WordPress installations:

• Database configuration – Checked whether the MySQL tables and database collation were set to utf8mb4_unicode_ci, which fully supports characters like apostrophes, accents, and em dashes.
• Theme output functions – Examined the PHP templates that render database content to ensure that the data was being escaped and output correctly. Functions such as htmlentities() or htmlspecialchars() can inadvertently convert characters to encoded HTML entities if not implemented properly.
• Plugin interference – Reviewed any content, SEO, or caching plugins that might alter text or apply double-encoding during output.
• Caching layers – Determined that cached versions of the affected pages could still be displaying outdated, incorrectly encoded data even after fixes were applied.

Resolution steps

1. Adjusted PHP character handling
   Updated the theme’s PHP templates to rely on native WordPress functions like esc_html() and wp_kses_post() to safely display content without breaking special characters.
2. Verified database and WordPress configuration
   Confirmed that both the WordPress configuration (wp-config.php) and database were using the utf8mb4 character set to properly store multi-byte characters.
3. Cleared all cache layers
   Flushed all caches, including object cache, page cache, and server-side cache (such as those managed by Pressable, WP Rocket, or Cloudflare), ensuring new encoded content was displayed correctly.
4. Validated front-end display
   Tested across multiple browsers and devices to confirm that names and other text containing apostrophes or accented characters displayed properly everywhere.

Final outcome

After implementing the fixes and clearing all cache layers, all special characters displayed correctly site-wide. The solution ensured that both database storage and front-end rendering were aligned with modern UTF-8 standards, preventing similar encoding issues in the future.

Key takeaways

• Always configure your WordPress database to use utf8mb4 encoding for complete compatibility with special characters.
• Use WordPress-native escaping functions instead of PHP’s raw encoding functions to prevent unwanted HTML entity conversions.
• Remember to flush all caches after making updates to encoded content or template files.
• Test across multiple browsers and devices to confirm consistent rendering.

If your WordPress site is displaying strange symbols, question marks, or misformatted text, our expert development team can help diagnose and fix these issues quickly and correctly.
Contact Freshy to get professional WordPress support today.