When using the AnQi CMS to build and manage websites, you may encounter situations where Chinese content is displayed as garbled characters. This is usually not a problem with the system itself, but rather due to inconsistent encoding in the template files.By ensuring that the template files use UTF-8 encoding, you can completely resolve this problem, allowing website content to be presented to visitors clearly and accurately.

AnQi CMS was designed to pursue efficiency, flexibility, and ease of use from the beginning. It excels in supporting multiple languages and SEO optimization, and correct coding is the foundation for leveraging these advantages.Understanding and applying the correct character encoding is the first step to ensure website stability and perfect content display.

Understanding character encoding: Why is UTF-8 so important?

Computers need a set of rules to convert characters to numeric codes when processing text, and then display the numeric codes as characters. This set of rules is called character encoding.Imagine if the sender and receiver use different 'ciphertexts', then the information will become unreadable, which is the fundamental reason for the generation of garbage code.

UTF-8 is the most widely used character encoding standard globally, it is capable of accommodating almost all characters in the world, including Chinese, English, Japanese and various other languages.Its design is very ingenious, using fewer bytes to store commonly used English characters and more bytes for complex characters (such as Chinese), thus ensuring compatibility while also considering storage efficiency.Therefore, choosing UTF-8 can ensure that your website displays content correctly across different regions and browsers, avoiding garbled text issues caused by encoding differences.

The agreement of Anqi CMS template with UTF-8 encoding

According to the template making conventions of Anqi CMS, all template files are required to use UTF-8 encoding.The official document explicitly states: "The template file is encoded in UTF8. If it is encoded in other encoding, it will cause page garbled text and cannot be displayed normally."}]

This means that even if the content of your database or background input is correctly encoded in UTF-8, if the template file displayed on the front-end itself uses a different encoding (such as GBK or ANSI, which are common in Windows systems), the browser may encounter errors when parsing.When the browser tries to parse a template file encoded in GBK using the UTF-8 rules, it will not be able to read the Chinese characters in it, resulting in these characters being displayed as a pile of unrecognizable symbols - which is what we commonly refer to as garbled text.This encoding mismatch is the main cause of garbled Chinese content.

How to ensure that the template file is UTF-8 encoded?

Ensure that the template file uses UTF-8 encoding is a relatively simple operation, but you need to pay attention to it when creating and editing files.

1. When creating or editing template files:

When you create or modify the template file of Aigle CMS, please get into the habit of saving it as UTF-8 encoding immediately. Most code editors provide the function to set file encoding, such as:

  • VS Code / Sublime Text：通常在底部状态栏会显示当前文件编码，点击后可以选择“以编码重新打开”或“以编码保存”。Please select “UTF-8” or “UTF-8 with BOM” (recommended to use “UTF-8 without BOM”).
  • Notepad++：Select “Encoding (E)” -> “Encode to UTF-8 without BOM” or “Encode with UTF-8 without BOM format” in the menu bar.
  • Dreamweaver / Other editors：Similarly, encoding options are generally provided in the "File" -> "Save As" dialog box, or the encoding settings can be found in the editor's status bar/properties panel.

Especially for Windows users, since the system may save text files in GBK or ANSI encoding by default, it is necessary to manually check and change it to UTF-8.

2. Check the encoding of existing template files:

If you want to check through a non-editor method, for Linux servers, you can use the command line tool:file -i 您的模板文件路径For example:file -i /template/default/index.htmlIf the output containscharset=utf-8This indicates that the file is encoded in UTF-8.

The impact of Chinese garbled text outside

The incorrect encoding not only causes Chinese content to display as garbled characters, but may also bring other potential issues that affect the overall performance of the website:

  • SEO effect受损：Search engines may fail to correctly identify keywords and text when crawling and indexing your website content if encoding issues are encountered, which may affect the ranking and visibility of your website in search results.
  • Special symbol display error:In addition to Chinese, some special symbols, emojis, or multilingual text may also be displayed as boxes, question marks, or garbled text due to encoding mismatches.
  • The front-end displays misalignment or functional anomalies:In some cases, incorrect encoding can even lead to the destruction of HTML structure, which in turn affects the page layout, or JavaScript scripts may execute abnormally due to unexpected characters.
  • User experience deteriorates:The content of a website in garbled characters can confuse visitors and make the site seem unprofessional, which can severely damage the website's image and user trust.

Summary

Ensure that the CMS template file uses UTF-8 encoding is a simple but crucial operation.This not only can thoroughly solve the problem of Chinese garbled code, but also ensures the global compatibility of website content, improves SEO effect, and maintains the professional image of the website.Hope this article can help you avoid encoding pitfalls during the website building process in AnQi CMS, and create a website that is barrier-free and of high quality.

Common Questions (FAQ)

1. I have ensured that the database and security CMS backend content are UTF-8 encoded, why are the template files still showing Chinese garbled text?

2. Why recommend using "UTF-8 without BOM" instead of "UTF-8"? What is BOM?

BOM (Byte Order Mark, 字节顺序标记) is an optional mark in UTF-8 encoding used to indicate the byte order.In some specific editors or systems, BOM may be automatically added when saving UTF-8 files.Although most modern browsers and applications can handle UTF-8 files with BOM correctly, in some cases, especially when parsing backend program files such as PHP, Go, or HTML, CSS template files, BOM may be mistakenly recognized as an additional invisible character.This may cause some unnecessary blank lines, abnormal HTTP header transmission, or program parsing errors.To avoid potential compatibility issues, it is usually recommended to choose 'UTF-8 without BOM' when saving template and code files.

3. Besides template files, what else should be paid special attention to UTF-8 encoding?

In addition to the security CMS template files themselves, there are several places that need attention to encoding consistency: