Do I need to convert to UTF-8?
If your site IS RUNNING or you have UPGRADED FROM an older version of Zen Cart where your language files are/were set to iso-8859-1, and you don't have any specific need for extended-character multibyte support (for example your store is only in english and only english-speaking customers visit your store), then you may find it best to keep your site in iso-8859-1 (aka "latin1") mode instead of converting to UTF8.To do this, you'll need to fix BOTH your admin and non-admin files:
- Edit your upgraded english.php file to use the old CHARSET and setlocale settings (SEE YOUR OLD english.php FILE CONTENTS).
That is, in both the admin and non-admin configure.php files, KEEP the old references to iso-8859-1 INSTEAD of utf-8. You can see these defines in your pre-upgrade english.php files.
Same with any other whatever_language.php files.
... AND ... - Also edit your two configure.php files to set DB_CHARSET to 'latin1' instead of 'utf8'
(add the line if it doesn't exist):
define('DB_CHARSET', 'latin1');
