Title: Migration to PHP5 causes corruption
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Migration to PHP5 causes corruption

 *  [wordshine](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wordshine/)
 * (@wordshine)
 * [16 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/php5-migration-causes-corruption/)
 * I tried to upgrade from 2.8.6 to 2.9.1 but the process failed right at the end,
   requiring PHP5. We went back to 2.8.6. My provider migrated my site to a server
   running PHP5 and MySQL5. But many of the WordPress files were somehow corrupted
   in the process.
 * The corruption is similar to that which occurs moving a document from a Mac to
   a PC: extended ASCII characters get replaced by a small string of incorrect characters.
 * What can I do to prevent this from happening, or to correct it afterwards?
 * I can repeat the migration if necessary, as the original site still exists. But
   I don’t want to go through perhaps 200 files correcting the corrupted symbols.
 * Might it be caused by PHP5 parsing the files differently? Also, WordPress itself
   generally does a good job translating, for example, two hyphens or a hyphen surrounded
   by spaces into an em rule, or straight quotes into typographical quotes and the
   like. However, I usually enter these characters directly with keyboard codes.
   Does this, perhaps, upset PHP5? Because it’s these very characters which have
   become corrupted.
 * But anyway, can I prevent it when migrating to PHP5?
 * Thanks.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  Thread Starter [wordshine](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wordshine/)
 * (@wordshine)
 * [16 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/php5-migration-causes-corruption/#post-1341176)
 * I really need some help migrating to PHP5. This question is three days old and
   I’m waiting to change servers. How can I avoid this corruption when migrating
   to PHP5?
 * The reason for migrating is to upgrade to 2.9.1.
 * Thanks.
 *  [fairmontgazebo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/fairmontgazebo/)
 * (@fairmontgazebo)
 * [16 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/php5-migration-causes-corruption/#post-1341177)
 * try the plugin UTF-sanitize.
 * [http://kaloyan.info/blog/proekti/wordpress-proekti/wp-utf8-sanitize-plugin/](http://kaloyan.info/blog/proekti/wordpress-proekti/wp-utf8-sanitize-plugin/)

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘Migration to PHP5 causes corruption’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [Corruption](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/corruption/)
 * [php5](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/php5/)
 * [upgrade](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/upgrade/)

 * In: [Installing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/installation/)
 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [fairmontgazebo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/fairmontgazebo/)
 * Last activity: [16 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/php5-migration-causes-corruption/#post-1341177)
 * Status: not resolved

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