Other languages in the database

I'm building a site that'll hold other languages in the database as posts, and I'm wondering about any character issues.

Normally I just leave the default "collation" settings which is in general latin something, but if I have say German or Spanish or even Japanese characters in the db, how can I ensure they're preserved right? Considering the data needs to be perfectly searchable by those people as well

Thanks for any tips

 

Currently I use in my blog de, es and en
as charset of course UTF-8 in mySQL AS WELL AS ENTIRE SITE.

zero problems with special characters - in flat file I additionally use ru, bg and other languages - same as above.
important for multilingual sites of course is a correct and strict configuration
starting from
your text/html editors
apache default charset
files ( meta tags language and charset )
all should have ONE and same charset configuration - in my case I have ALL strictly UTF-8

 

Would UTF-8 cover all characters for virtually all languages?

 

I am NOT sure about that because "ALL" languages includes all chineese, asian, arab, south-east asian and more different characters. I am almost sure that SOME very extreme languages may require special treatment!

however - on my desktop - fully configured in UTF-8 - I can view "most" asian languages, incl korean, japanese, chinese, ... just by using clean full UTF-8 configuration PLUS installing a bunch of foreign/asian fonts.

but at least such a UTF-8 server configuration includes ALL eu-languages as well as cyrillic charset and many others.
you would have to make a case by case test OR google for more details if you want "ALL" languages.
nothing to worry about that because if you really have THAT HUGE traffic - then you also make ten thousands of $ / months adsense revenue to solve the problem.

 

Probably will do it case-by-case. Add a few ones that'll definitely work (closest to English characters) then experiment with chinese etc, adding as I go. Thanks for the tips

 

with ALL eu languages UTF-8 will work perfectly.

for asian ( chinese, etc ) languages - may be you first make some tests with a separate mysql db before risking problems with your main db

you may find more help in a truly foreign language oriented mysql forum from webmasters who actually run exotic charset db's I am sure they know how to solve it.