How to force a specific code page for a website?

Question

HI I have the following (apparently simple) problem: I have to install a simple website, made by someone else, on a web hosting account. The site consists of lot and lot of HTML pages, no dynamic content, created some in MS Word and saved as html, some in frontpage, etc. A mixed bag.

I uploaded initially on a test account on my server (Win Server 2003) and it works ok. Then I uploaded on the real web hosting (fedora / apache). When I loaded the site in browser I see lot of odd craracters (instead of diacritics, used in html pages). Duacritics were saved as escape code, like & #350; for Ș (using codepage 1252).

The problem is, when I load the page from my own test server, the browser select automatically correct codepage (1252).

But when I load the site from public host, the same bowser loads the page using utf-8 encoding, rendering page with odd caracrets.

The test site on my server can be seen at http://radu-stanian.dnsalias.com and on public server at http://radustanian.scoli.edu.ro/

This happens no matter what browser I use (IE, ff or chrome)

What should I do to force browsers to load the pages in correct codepage?

Making changes to every page is not an option, because there are hundreds of pages, created by various peoples which could edit them further for update

Thank you

Answer 1

I did a quick google search and this is what I came up with: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-htaccess-charset

I've never messed with the .htaccess files with this scenario, but from what I read up it seems like you can force a certain character codepage mode based on file extension, which is what you need.

I'm not sure if it works, but hopefully it does :)

Answer 2

Most web servers allow you to edit HTTP headers. One of them can specify the exact codepage for a browser to use.

For example:

Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-4