How to change the default encoding to UTF-8 for Apache

I am using a hosting company and it will list the files in a directory if the file index.html is not there. It uses ISO 8859-1 as the default encoding.

If the server is Apache, is there a way to set UTF-8 as the default instead?

I found out that it is actually using a DOCTYPE of HTML 3.2 and then there is not charset at all... so it is not setting any encoding. But is there a way to change it to use UTF-8?

Solution 1:

In httpd.conf add (or change if it's already there):

AddDefaultCharset utf-8

Solution 2:

Add this to your .htaccess:

IndexOptions +Charset=UTF-8

Or, if you have administrator rights, you could set it globally by editing httpd.conf and adding:

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

(You can use AddDefaultCharset in .htaccess too, but it won’t affect Apache-generated directory listings that way.)

Solution 3:

See AddDefaultCharset Directive, AddCharset Directive, and this article.

AddDefaultCharset utf-8

But I have to use Chinese characters now and then. Previously, I translated Chinese characters to Unicode code and include it in the document using the &# hack. But it is only useful for page having a few characters.

There is a better way to do that: encode the charset information in the filename, and apache will output the proper encoding header based on that. This is possible thanks to the AddCharset lines in the conf file, such as the line below:

conf/httpd.conf:

AddCharset UTF-8 .utf8

So if you have a file whose names ends in .html.utf8, apache will serve the page as if it is encoded in UTF-8 and will dump the proper character-encoding directive in the header accordingly.

Solution 4:

In file .htaccess, add this line:

AddCharset utf-8 .html .css .php .txt .js

This is for those that do not have access to their server's configuration file. It is just one more thing to try when other attempts failed.

As far as performance issues regarding the use of file .htaccess, I have not seen this. My typical page load times are 150-200 ms with or without file .htaccess.

What good is performance if your page does not render correctly? Most shared servers do not allow user access to the configuration file which is the preferred place to add a character set.

Solution 5:

On Ubuntu 12.04, it's sufficient to uncomment the line AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 in /etc/apache2/conf.d/charset. If you're using upstream Apache, the file may be called httpd.conf, and you may have to insert the line.