pro(re)gress

  The change from "utf8" to "utf8mb4" and the corresponding replacement of "utf8_general_ci" with "utf8mb4_general_ci" occurred in different versions for MySQL and MariaDB. For MySQL, the "utf8mb4" character set was introduced in version 5.5.3, which was released in 2010. However, it was not made the default character set until version 5.7.8, which was released in 2015. From that point on, "utf8mb4" became the recommended character set for MySQL going forward. For MariaDB, the "utf8mb4" character set was introduced in version 10.0.1, which was released in 2014. Like MySQL, it was made the default character set in a later version, specifically version 10.2.4, which was released in 2017. So, to summarize, the first versions of MySQL and MariaDB that introduced the "utf8mb4" character set and replaced "utf8_general_ci" with "utf8mb4_general_ci" were: MySQL: "utf8mb4" was introduce...

  To avoid several problems the database collation for opencart should be as follows: - for Opencart 4.0.1.1 and above it should be " utf8mb4_general_ci " - for Opencart 1.5.51 (Opencart  2.x, Opencart 3.x ) up to Opencart 4.0.1.0 the collation should be " utf8_general_ci " - for Opencart 1.4.1 up to Opencart 1.5.4.1 the collation should be " utf8_bin " - for Opencart <1.1.1 up to Opencart 1.4.0 the collation should be " utf8_unicode_ci " If you are using the latest version of mysql always use " utf8mb4_general_ci ". Never use UTF8mb3*