Strange server issue

grantw · Jan 6, 2006

Hi, just wondering if anyone has experienced this before - When I upload web pages to one of my servers all special characters (£ sign, copyright sign etc.) are showing up as question marks - viewing the source of the page shows the correct characters.

Any ideas where the problem may be as this is doing my head in??

Much appreciated , Grant

tifosi · Jan 6, 2006

windows or Unix server... static html or php/asp?

grantw · Jan 6, 2006

Its unix and is happening with both static html and php

Grant

aqls · Jan 6, 2006

All the below suggestions are subject to them being complete rubbish etc:

Try 1:
Are you using a different font that doesn't actually have the characters or your font markup is specifying something strange.

2:
Look at doctype - if its xml are you forgetting to add declaration

if html is it something like:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">

3:
Try a different browser - IE or Firefox or reboot your browser it may have some sort of bx in it.

4:
Have you coded them in hex rather than octal?

If you want to post a test url perhaps we can have a look

-aqls-

grantw · Jan 6, 2006

Hi aqls:

1 + 3) the font is Tahoma and my other websites on other servers display fine using ie.

2) For the php site the doctype is:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">

The html site doesnt have doctype

Ive pm'd you an example page as it is my sisters site

Many thanks, Grant

jonno · Jan 7, 2006

simple - just use html entities instead, for example:

£ = £

a full list can be found here:

http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm

grantw · Jan 7, 2006

Cheers Jonno I will try that - what would be the underlying cause of this though, it looks like it must be an issue on the server as viewing the files locally they work fine??

Grant

jonno · Jan 7, 2006

no it's not a serverside but a clientside issue - a perfectly normal one at that.

your web browser can only display characters that are defined in the characterset you specify in the in your html meta, for example:

Code:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />

if you wish to use a character outside of this character set, you must use the ascii equivalent.

hope that helps.

Jon.

grantw · Jan 7, 2006

Ok, but one of the sites was working fine on another server - I then uploaded the exact same pages to the other server and this problem occurrs??

Grant