Timmy

Ahh, that makes sense. Thanks, wolstech! I've just created my new hosting account.

Hi there!

I used to have an account on the Stevie server with the username timmy. I believe that my username was never released after the server failed. I was wondering if this username could be freed up so I can re-use it on my new account?

Thanks!

Wooo! Hello, Tommy!

Hi there,

I'm not staff but I think I might be able to help you.

Database

While it's probably better to be consistent, database collations don't really matter. Just tested that.

PHP

Let's make sure PHP is ready to display unicode characters.

Tell your database connection to use utf8 after connecting:

<?php

// Establish database connection
$db = new mysqli($dbHost, $dbUser, $dbPassword, $dbName);
$db->set_charset('utf8');

// Catch any connection errors
if ($db->connect_errno) {
   die('DB Error: ' . $db->connect_error);
}

Escape database data before outputting to a web page:

<?php

// Require database connection file
require_once 'database.php';

// Create escape function
function e($string) {
   return htmlspecialchars($string, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
}

// Getting data from database
$data = $db->query("SELECT * FROM guestbook");

// Escape and output to page
while ($row = $data->fetch_assoc()) {
   echo e($row['message']) . '<br>';
}

HTML

Define your charset in the head of your HTML:

<meta charset="utf-8">

Hey! My name is Timmy. I'm 16 and I live in Belgium.

I've been hacking on code since I was like 11. In my free time I'm either gaming, writing mods or developing web apps. (:

This topic is a little old but I think I might be able to add a little bit more information about changing timezones.

PHP

Here's an example on how to get and change timezones. Changing the timezone affects functions related to time and date:

<?php
echo date_default_timezone_get(); // Get default timezone used by date/time functions
echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // Get current time

date_default_timezone_set("UTC"); // Change default timezone to UTC
echo date_default_timezone_get(); // Get default timezone used by date/time functions
echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // Get current time

Will output:

America/Los_Angeles
2015-05-01 06:14:49
UTC
2015-05-01 13:14:49

SQL

Now, you were probably referring to the NOW() function in SQL.

Get timezone used by server:

SELECT @@system_time_zone;

Will output:

PDT

Change timezone used by server (for current session):

SET time_zone = '+00:00'; -- Change timezone to UTC
SELECT NOW();

Will output:

2015-05-01 13:16:28