.. include:: /Includes.rst.txt .. _character-sets: ============== Character sets ============== All TYPO3 websites use UTF-8 as their character set. Using UTF-8 means that you have a consistent data storage and can store any glyph from any language without worrying further about character sets. .. _character-sets-database: Database field lengths ====================== The TYPO3 Core is compatible with UTF-8. However, you might face the problem that the database field lengths of some extensions need to be extended. For example, each Chinese glyph takes three bytes. So if a field is a :sql:`varchar(10)` and an author enters 10 Chinese glyphs, only the first 3 glyphs will be stored (as they require 9 bytes). UTF-8 is tricky in this respect, as all ASCII characters only need 1 byte, while European special characters usually need 2 and Asian character sets 3 bytes - but some special characters can even need 5-6 bytes! .. seealso:: For more information on how to set up your database to use UTF-8, please read here: * `MariaDB: Supported Character Sets and Collations `__ * `MySQL: Unicode Support `__ * `PostgreSQL: Character Set Support `__