phpMyAdmin and latin1_swedish_ci

Answer 1

Usually collation problems will cause your queries to run exceedingly slow, so it's important that everything is setup properly.

You have a database connection collation, a database collation and a table collation. Be sure all three are setup to utf8. If the problem persists, check your phpmyadmin configuration file and see what collation defaults are showing up.

Answer 2

goto phpMyAdmin's folder look for config.inc.php. Open it and search for 'collation', probably arnd line 370 - change it to -

$cfg['DefaultConnectionCollation'] = 'utf8_unicode_ci';