We've started using MySQL conditional comments (of the form /*!40100 ... */) with some MySQL 4.1+ specific code (to set the right db table character set). Unfortunately, phpMyAdmin blindly removes all comments when you upload an SQL file like our database.mysql. This means that anyone performing a fresh install, using MySQL 4.1+ and phpMyAdmin will encounter problems with non-ascii characters. In theory the admin should just specify the character set when creating the database. But, most hosts will create databases for you AFAIK, or will do it through a simplified front-end where you can only set the name. I don't really have a good view on the usage of tools like phpMyAdmin. I imagine it's pretty widespread though. I found out about this issue after someone reported Unicode problems today: http://drupal.org/node/56112 So, any ideas on how to address this? Some options: - Tell phpMyAdmin users to create their db in utf-8 encoding (or have it created as such by the host). Will need clear and easy to find docs/instructions. - Provide a separate MySQL 4.0 and 4.1+ database.mysql file instead of one with conditional comments and tell people to use the right one. I submitted a patch to phpMyAdmin(*) to make them parse these constructs correctly, but it doesn't help existing users at all. Steven Wittens (*) Yes, I washed my hands afterwards. Their code stinks.