Home → Installation and Upgrade Manual → HelpSpot 4 - Installation & Setup → Creating a UTF-8 Database

7. Creating a UTF-8 Database

MySQL

MySQL databases for HelpSpot version 4 should default to the InnoDB storage engine and to a UTF-8mb4 character set and collation.

For MySQL 5.5.3+, we can use the character set utf8mb4, which is a more complete implementation of UTF-8.

CREATE DATABASE helpspot_db2
    CHARACTER SET utf8mb4
    COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

Note that you should change the database name (helpspot_db) as needed for your use case. You may also need to assign a specific user to the database.

SqlServer

SqlServer uses UTF16 by default and likely needs no further instructions on using a UTF-8 friendly database when creating a new database for use with HelpSpot. Users of the Windows Installer will find the new database is created for you, and so most users will not need to worry about creating a new database.

The conversion process will be required to convert existing database data, which may not be saved in UTF-8 encoding.