Weird chars on top of my site ()

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Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by Dece » Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:54 pm

Hello,

I've just installed Joomla 1.0.15 (french version).

the charset is set as iso-8859-1 and my browser also.

The problem is :

When i display the site all chars like : é è à etc appears good but i got weird characters on the top : 

They disappear if i change the encoding chars to utf-8, but in this case, the chars like é è à etc.. don't look good anymore.

I'm searching for 2 weeks now how to solve this problem but i can't find any help which solve this.

Thank you for your help.

Dèce

PS: here a SS to help : http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8913 ... bugbc8.png

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by dhuelsmann » Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:16 pm

JimDeLaHunt wrote: Yes, "" is the Byte Order Mark (BOM) of the Unicode Standard. Specifically it is the hex bytes EF BB BF, which form the UTF-8 representation of the BOM, misinterpreted as ISO 8859/1 text instead of UTF-8.

Probably what it means is that you are using a text editor that is saving files in UTF-8 with the BOM, when it should be saving without the BOM. It could be PHP files that have the BOM, in which case they'd appear as literal text on your page. Or it could be translated text you pasted into Joomla! edit windows.

The Unicode Consortium's FAQ on the Byte Order Mark is at http://www.unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html#BOM .
leolam wrote: language file (not template or index or anything else:

change:
DEFINE('_ISO','charset=iso-8859-1');
to

Code: Select all

DEFINE('_ISO','charset=UTF-8');
and you should be ok

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by Dece » Sat Mar 15, 2008 7:03 pm

dhuelsmann wrote:
JimDeLaHunt wrote: Yes, "" is the Byte Order Mark (BOM) of the Unicode Standard. Specifically it is the hex bytes EF BB BF, which form the UTF-8 representation of the BOM, misinterpreted as ISO 8859/1 text instead of UTF-8.

Probably what it means is that you are using a text editor that is saving files in UTF-8 with the BOM, when it should be saving without the BOM. It could be PHP files that have the BOM, in which case they'd appear as literal text on your page. Or it could be translated text you pasted into Joomla! edit windows.

The Unicode Consortium's FAQ on the Byte Order Mark is at http://www.unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html#BOM .
This version worked perfectly !

Thank you a lot for your fast and helpful answer ;)

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by geniehost » Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:28 am

Hello all,

I got the same things but with search only, how can I fix this problem in search?

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by sshank » Fri Aug 08, 2008 4:48 am

That fixes the problem immediately. To summarize:

1. Find your language file. Since I'm using English, I found english.php, which is inside the language directory in your joomla installation. Make a backup of it before you edit it.
2. Change

Code: Select all

DEFINE('_ISO','charset=iso-8859-1');
to

Code: Select all

DEFINE('_ISO','charset=UTF-8');
(mine was at line 421 of the file. Just search for _ISO to find it.
3. Save the file and it will work!

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by HarryKare » Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:28 am

We also had the problem with those characters showing up. We tried the suggestion of changing the Character Set, unfortunately all it did was hide the characters, but they still took up space on the pages (pushed menus, titles, etc down) plus the character set had other unwanted side effects in certain components displaying apostrophes and commas incorrectly.

The problem was indeed the BOM as explained earlier. The great people at Rochen hosting found the file for us that was causing the problems, corrected it by removing the marker and the problems went away. In our case it was the Virtuemart language file that we had edited.

For those with shell access here is a little command provided by Rochen to find all files with the BOM set in the public_html directory - be sure to change it to what your correct path on your server is

Code: Select all

grep -rl $'\xEF\xBB\xBF' /home/username/public_html
and if you are comfortable with the VI editor they suggested this to clear it

open the file in vi

Code: Select all

vi /path-to-file-name/file.php
remove the BOM:

Code: Select all

set nobomb
save the file:

Code: Select all

wq
For those without shell access and using windows, ftp download the most likely php files you edited, open them in notepad, do a file save-as and be sure to set the encoding to ANSI (at the bottom of the save-as window), then upload the files back again.

I hope this helps, I know we spent more time on it than we wanted

Harry
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Web Design and Point of Sale
http://www.visiontm.com

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by Arnonld » Fri Jan 30, 2009 8:49 am

Hello
I have the same problem with Joomla 1.5, but can't find the DEFINE _ISO that was pointed here.
Any ideas...

Thanks

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by bt-t » Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:43 am

Arnonld wrote: I have the same problem with Joomla 1.5, but can't find the DEFINE _ISO that was pointed here.
The same is happening to me... I don't find DEFINE_ISO... any idea about how to fix it??

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by infograf768 » Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:09 pm

DEFINE_ISO is NOT to use in 1.5.

For 1.5 issues, please post in the 1.5 forums.

Usually, the extraneous characters mean that the index.php of your template (or another php file you edited) contains some non-ASCII chars and has to be saved as utf8 NO BOM, which you can do by opening the file in Notepad++, Babelpad on Windows, TextWrangler on Macintosh.
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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by nambad » Mon Feb 15, 2010 6:07 pm

I am having the same problem in the site.. i cant see the index page at all..
tried everything but cant get it to work..
Need Help urgently..
I dont have shell access..

http://indiansagiarchery.com

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by danger89 » Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:33 pm

Just change your charset to UTF-8

Edit:
It is because of the editor Joomla developor or you use:
if you are using Notepad, it may be as simple as making sure you are saving it using "ANSI" encoding during the Save As process, rather than "UTF-8" (there is a dropdown in the lower left hand corner of the save as box, just below "Save as Type".

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by specialme » Thu Mar 04, 2010 2:06 am

I got the  too on http://www.allinfo.ro/ template too and i fix it by changing some lines into the template code. If any of you have that template just let me know and I'll tell you the solution.
I should mention that my charset was on UTF-8 any change doesn't helped me..
http://www.templatewebshop.com - Free Templates Box
http://www.bestscriptarchive.com - Download Scripts Free

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by danger89 » Thu Mar 04, 2010 1:17 pm

Even saving the file again (save as) then select to save it as only UTF-8 (without BOM)?

And jus to be sure, in your head:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by chesterlrivas » Mon Oct 10, 2011 9:58 pm

Hasn't anybody found a fix to the problem yet it seems no one has responded with any positive feed back yet. I thought the charset is supposed to be UTF-8 by default.

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by infograf768 » Tue Oct 11, 2011 4:26 am

chesterlrivas wrote:Hasn't anybody found a fix to the problem yet it seems no one has responded with any positive feed back yet. I thought the charset is supposed to be UTF-8 by default.
It is not if the file has been manually edited and not saved with the correct encoding.
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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by Blue Man » Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:01 am

It is not if the file has been manually edited and not saved with the correct encoding.
It is possible that the file is saved with the wrong encoding? Like if you edited the source files?

Because i remember having this problem with a non-joomla site, and basically i solved it by converting the files in notepad++.

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by infograf768 » Wed Nov 16, 2011 9:23 am

As long as you edit the files with a UTF8-aware editor as Notepad ++ indeed on Windows, and save the file as UTF8 NO BOM, all shall be OK.
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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by whiz16 » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:35 pm

infograf768 wrote:As long as you edit the files with a UTF8-aware editor as Notepad ++ indeed on Windows, and save the file as UTF8 NO BOM, all shall be OK.
I've tried using Notepad++ to save file as UTF and it did work. Been searching for days for solutions, didn't know it was a problem in "language" encoding of the files. Glad to solve the strange chars showing up.

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by toddb575 » Fri Jan 27, 2012 8:12 am

May be you faced this problem when you made a mistake to edit the file with UTF-8
i have faced quite similar problem but after changing charset to UTF-8
it solved. So try to edit it correctly.

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by globeresellers » Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:45 pm

HarryKare wrote:We also had the problem with those characters showing up. We tried the suggestion of changing the Character Set, unfortunately all it did was hide the characters, but they still took up space on the pages (pushed menus, titles, etc down) plus the character set had other unwanted side effects in certain components displaying apostrophes and commas incorrectly.

The problem was indeed the BOM as explained earlier. The great people at Rochen hosting found the file for us that was causing the problems, corrected it by removing the marker and the problems went away. In our case it was the Virtuemart language file that we had edited.

For those with shell access here is a little command provided by Rochen to find all files with the BOM set in the public_html directory - be sure to change it to what your correct path on your server is

Code: Select all

grep -rl $'\xEF\xBB\xBF' /home/username/public_html
and if you are comfortable with the VI editor they suggested this to clear it

open the file in vi

Code: Select all

vi /path-to-file-name/file.php
remove the BOM:

Code: Select all

set nobomb
save the file:

Code: Select all

wq
For those without shell access and using windows, ftp download the most likely php files you edited, open them in notepad, do a file save-as and be sure to set the encoding to ANSI (at the bottom of the save-as window), then upload the files back again.

I hope this helps, I know we spent more time on it than we wanted

Harry

Hello Harry, please can you help me out here as I'm currently facing the same issue after installing the latest version of Virtuemart. I have already uninstalled my VM installation but the chars are still showing up.

Please help out anyway. Thanks for your time.

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by aakashdavis » Sat Apr 21, 2012 3:30 am

Is there any such problem with Arabic Language Pack ? i was thinking to install

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by infograf768 » Mon Jul 02, 2012 5:16 am

Folks, joomla 1.0.x is now an antic. We do not support it anymore. Use 2.5.6.
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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by sam1216 » Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:23 am

bt-t wrote:
Arnonld wrote: I have the same problem with Joomla 1.5, but can't find the DEFINE _ISO that was pointed here.http://lifestyle.alrazaak.com/Mehndidesign.html
The same is happening to me... I don't find DEFINE_ISO... any idea about how to fix it??
same thing happening to me bt-t i have site with joomla facing same issues

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by ayunksyah » Mon Oct 29, 2012 6:26 am

I thought the char set is supposed to be UTF-8 by default.

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Re: Weird chars on top of my site ()

Post by infograf768 » Tue Oct 30, 2012 7:39 am

ayunksyah wrote:I thought the char set is supposed to be UTF-8 by default.
Not in the obsolete joomla 1.0.x
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