vbulletin editor blanks post when using non-standard characters (e.g., "ñ" or "—")

Unity Engine
1

Reproduction steps:

  1. Click to create a new thread
  2. In your content, insert the character ñ or — (emdash)
  3. Click Preview Post

Expected: your post shows up
Actual: you are presented with a blank message screen

Likely cause: wrong version of PHP for vbulletin

Available fixes:

  1. Make the following change to vb/ckeditor.php (see source):
// make the following change to /vb/ckeditor.php
// Line 507:
htmlspecialchars($value)
// Change to:
htmlspecialchars($value, ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401, "ISO-8859-1")
  1. Downgrade from PHP 5.4.3 (vbulletin unsupported) to PHP 5.3.13 (which vbulletin supports) (source)
2

Hmm, seems to work fine here. – ñ ü π ™ © • ° ≠

–Eric

3

Well, almost fine…if I attempt to edit that post, I get a blank edit box, but it did post OK.

–Eric