PHP Error Messages
If accents do not display properly
Solution
Add charset=UTF8 to new PDO(...)
Example
Change:
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$host;dbname=$dbname", $user, $password);
To:
$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$host;dbname=$dbname;charset=UTF8", $user, $password);
source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4854446/save-accents-in-mysql-database