Ten ways to solve UTF-8 encoding in PHP

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8
[mysqld]
default-character-set=utf8
default-storage-engine=myisam
Add under [mysqld]:
default-collation=utf8_bin
init_connect='set names utf8'

7. Add in front of the PHP program that needs to do database operations

mb_internal_encoding('utf-8');

8. Add at the end of create table:

engine=myisam default charset=utf8 collate=utf8_bin

9.phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

$cfg['defaultcharset'] = 'utf-8';
$cfg['recodingengine'] = 'iconv';

10. When phpadmin exports data Uncheck "Use hexadecimal display for binary areas"

Note that file system functions do not support utf-8! It is said that php6 has built-in unicode support, so you can test it if you have the chance.