Mysql to use utf8mb4 by default for infinityfree

[hahahahacker2009]

Nowadays no one is using latin1. I know infinityfree use an older version
of mariadb, but newer mariadb use utf8mb4 by default.
I once created a latin1 table because I do not specify the default charset
for it. I think setting the default charset to utf8 for the whole IF’s mariadb is reasonable.
Now no one will create latin1 tables by accident.

[Admin]

I completely agree. We should have set a better default when we had the chance. Unfortunately, that opportunity is gone.

There are numerous websites that don’t explicitly set the charset (and do not use phpMyAdmin), which means their are now encoding everything with the server default charset latin1. If we change the server default to utf8/utf8mb3/utf8mb4 now, this will break every website that hasn’t already set the charset, because everything in their database is already encoded with latin1.

It’s a bad situation to be in, and I would very much love to have a more sensible default, but we can’t change it without breaking a lot of existing sites in the process.

That’s why we don’t change the charset: we fully agree it’s a stupid option, but we’ve painted ourselves in a corner.