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Fixing Mixed Database Encodings Before a Site Migration
If the site renders correctly but phpMyAdmin shows mojibake, do not migrate blindly — first identify how the data was stored and which connection settings are masking the issue.
A site can appear healthy in the browser while the database looks broken in phpMyAdmin. That usually means the content survived, but the storage, connection, or table collations are inconsistent.
Typical symptom
Some tables use cp1251_general_ci, others use utf8_general_ci, and phpMyAdmin shows unreadable text even though the CMS still outputs the site correctly.
Why this matters
If you migrate without fixing the encoding story, the next environment may stop “accidentally” compensating for the mismatch and the corruption will become visible on the public site.
Recommendation
Audit table collations, connection charset settings, and export/import encoding before moving the project. A migration is the worst time to guess what encoding the old site was really using.
Fixing alias_visible Errors After Moving a Site to Another Server
An “unknown column alias_visible” error during migration usually means the database schema and the codebase are no longer from the same Evolution generation.
Routing URLs Like /catalog/id Through OnPageNotFound
When a project needs cleaner product URLs without moving the data model into resources, an OnPageNotFound router can bridge the gap — as long as URL rewriting stays predictable.