Just an FYI that version 1.8.0 made the feature image function disappear for me using Themeforest’s Lotus. There was no problem with version 1.7.2. WordPress 4.2.2.
Ricardo’s code fixed it for me.
I am having the same problem as you Pat. I reauthenticate, the warnings go away and all is fine. Then a day later it asks me to reauthenticate again.
Just a follow-up to this, in case anyone comes afterwards with a similar problem and wonders what the outcome was.
The problem was not a character set and collation mismatch. It was the magic_quotes settings in the PHP.ini file. My ISP had them set to ON, but that was incompatible with WP. I asked them to turn them off and it immediately solved the problem.
http://www.oracast.com/blog/tag/wordpress-multiple-quotes/
http://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/magic-quotes-runtime-bug
http://www.wowtutorial.org/tutorial/171.html
