A Guide to UTF-8 Encoding in PHP and MySQL
Once you step beyond the comfortable confines of English-only character sets, you quickly find yourself entangled in the wonderfully wacky world of UTF-8. Indeed, navigating through UTF-8 related issues can be a frustrating and hair-pulling experience. This post provides a concise cookbook for addressing these issues when working with PHP and MySQL in particular, based on practical experience and lessons learned.
Source: A Guide to MySQL and PHP UTF-8 Encoding | Toptal