Forcing UTF8 connections and character set in MySQL

In some situations, it may be neccesar to force MySQL server collation and character set to UTF8. As you can't control all scripts that are connecting to your database( for instance: mysql command line, or mysqldump) For that , open the my.cnf file and add the below lines:

>character_set_server=utf8
skip-character-set-client-handshake

If you are interested in better performance, add the below line:

>collation_server=utf8_general_ci

If you are interested in better sorting order, add the below line instead:

>collation_server=utf8_unicode_ci