Selection and differentiation of GBK and UTF-8 Encoding

The GBK version has the same functionality as the UTF-8 version, except that the encoding method is different.

The GBK text encoding is expressed in dubyte, that is, both Chinese and English characters are expressed in dubyte, except that the maximum bit of GBK is set to 1 to distinguish Chinese characters.

UTF-8 encoding is a multi-byte encoding for international characters. It uses 8 bits (one byte) for English and 24 bits (three bits) for Chinese characters. For websites with more English characters, use a UTF-8 to save space.

GBK contains all Chinese characters; UTF-8 contains all the characters needed by all countries around the world.

GBK is based on the national standard gb2312 after expansion compatible with gb2312 standard, UTF-8 encoding text can be in various countries support utf8 character set on the browser display.
For example, if it is UTF-8 encoded, Chinese characters can also be displayed on Internet Explorer of foreigners, without the need to download the Chinese language support package for Internet Explorer. Therefore, for more English forums, use GBK each character occupies 2 bytes, while use UTF-8 English only occupies 1 byte.

To put it simply:
Utf8 is an international code. It is more universal and allows foreigners to browse forums.
GBK is a national code, and its versatility is worse than utf8. However, the database occupied by utf8 is larger than that occupied by GBK ~

Tip: if the customer base of your website is mainly for domestic users, we recommend that you use the GBK version because it can save space and be relatively stable compared with the UTF-8 version.
For DZ forums, many plug-ins only support GBK. It is better to use GBK for forums with many plug-ins, utf8 is better for forums with few plug-ins installed and special user groups.