set charset causing page to crash

I'm trying to get rid of those diamonds that appear when characters are entered into the database that don't fit the charset.

I added the line <?php $mysqli->set_charset("utf8"); ?> on the web page, but got an error "Call to a member function set_charset() on null in..."
I also tried to add a meta tag but that did nothing.
Can you advise on where to place this code to make it work? Or is there a better way to do it?

Our connection dialog allows you to set the charset. You have to make sure the database default is set to the same charset is set in phpMyAdmin as well.

Hi Ray,

I have done that, but please forgive me for following up, can you advice me which of the following I need to change, because the "dreaded diamonds" are still showing up (url in private message)

Database
Character Set utf8 -- UTF-8 Unicode
collation utf8_general_ci
Tables utf8_unicode_ci

Php
$SIG2 = new mysqli($hostname_SIG2, $username_SIG2, $password_SIG2, $database_SIG2);
$SIG2->set_charset('utf8');

Do the strange characters show in phpMyAdmin? It is possible they were inserted with the wrong charset and are already corrupt in the database, so there might not be anything we could do to get them to display properly on the page.

I'd need FTP access to debug this. Whatever the issue is it would require changing some php code that I can't access directly from the web.

Hi Ray, I really appreciate you taking a look into that.

I looked in phpMyAdmin and the quotation marks are showing up there, but one of them is showing up as a diamond on the actual page. It seems to be single apostrophes and the first quotation mark.

If you have time I have sent through the access details in private.

I'm unable to connect with that FTP information. The rest of the information seems to work for the database and CMS. Maybe you have IP restrictions that prevent me from accessing? Maybe there is a typo? The error says the login is incorrect.

try this one (in private)?

You didn't have this line in your live connection file:

$SIG2->set_charset('utf8');

Once I added it, the page displays properly.

Thank you sir I appreciate you taking the time to look at it!