FIXING WORDPRESS AND MYSQL CHARSET PROBLEM WITH BBWP2UTF8
I just released version 1.0 of bbwp2utf8 plugin on the wordpress plugin directory.
If you have issues with your blog with strange characters appearing due to a MySQL database Character Set not being UTF8 in combination with WordPress, then this might be the solution for you:
bbwp2utf8 will attempt to convert a wordpress or wordpress mu database with content in whatever character set to utf8. It uses the information provided by this guide on the wordpress codex site.
This solves the issue with weird characters due to UTF8 encoding issues as seen in the screenshot below.
Development for this plugin is made possible by VPRO Digitaal and started after encountering numerous solutions including other plugins and none providing a 100% workable solution. If you need any help with this plugin, do not hesistate to contact me. My company is available for hire 
Note: Keep in mind that this plugin has been tested thoroughly for wordpress mu, but only minimaly for wordpress. Please contact me if you encounter any issues with WordPress, patches are always welcome.
Visit this link http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbwp2utf8/ to download the plugin or to get more detailed info.
Make sure to have a working backup of your wordpress (mu) database before using this plugin!
I left you a post on the Mu forums, I tried your plugin but it wouldnt load for me
Konstantin, thanks for your comment. I have answered on the mu.wordpress.org forums. See here: http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=9089&replies=4#post-55075
Hi Bjorn
I’ve tried your plugin but it reduces — with data losses — my MySQL data base from 11Mb to 4,5Mb. All my posts get broken when the first special character (ç, ã, é, Ô, etc.) appears. Well, I have a backup, but… you know, it’s a pitty. My DB is iso-8859-1 again…
WordPress 2.6.2 / MySQL 5.0.16 / phpMyAdmin 2.11.9.1
Thank you
Regards
Hi Yuri,
I have not tested the plugin on WP 2.6.2 yet, but this is not supposed to happen. I’m very curious to what caused this and would like to know more. I’ll contact you by email.
i’e tried this plugins on wp.2.7 but i have the same problem as yuri? how to fix this..
@Bali Villa
Thanks for your comment.
I have sent you an email. Please let me know the exact problems and I’ll try to help you out.
ps: I’ve never heard back from Yuri, so I don’t know how or if he managed to use the plugin at all. So I need more info before I can fix or even know where to look for the problem…
Hi Bjorn,
I tried your plugin on a wordpress 2.8.6. After 3-4min I just got a white page. The database haven’t change. That’s all I can communicate you.
I really hoped your plugin will help because I had first a utf database which I migrated to a latin1 base. My new server is again utf. I think I’ve now utf data encoded in latin. Just convert the database wouldn’t help. But maybe your solution to pass by binary/ blob could work.
Have you any ideas how to make working your plugin.
Thanks for any suggestion
best
wolf