PHP 5.6 upgrade and special characters

Question

I have a website where I\'ve used php to include sections rather than having code be duplicated for each page.
However, recently my webhost upgraded the PHP to 5.6, and

Answer 1

I had the same problem after upgrading from php 5.5. to 5.6.

Solved it by setting the default_charset to an empty string in my script:

ini_set("default_charset", "");

Or if you have acceess to php.ini you can set default_charset = "" instead.

More info: https://www.saotn.org/php-56-default_charset-change-may-break-html-output/