Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Frustrated by the "Publishing failed. Could not update post in the database" error in WordPress? This typically happens when you try to save emojis or special characters on a site with an older database structure.
In this tutorial, we walk you through two effective methods to resolve this encoding issue. We cover how to check your MySQL requirements, how to safely back up your site via cPanel, and how to use simple code snippets in your functions.php file to fix the problem permanently. Whether you want to upgrade your character set to utf8mb4 or use an HTML entity fallback, this guide has you covered.
You've got a modern version of MySQL or MariaDB, you're running the latest WordPress, and everything is humming along—until you try to hit Update on a post containing an emoji (like 💡 or ✅). Then you get the dreaded: "Updating failed. Could not insert post into the database."
This isn't a WordPress bug; it's a legacy database collation issue preventing modern 4-byte characters from being saved. The root cause is that your database is still configured for the old utf8mb3 character set, which only supports 3 bytes per character. Emojis require 4 bytes.
*** SCRIPT FOR ONE TIME UPGRADE OF DATABASE
YouTube will not allow the GREATER-THAN-SIGN in this text description box, soooo, I published the scripts on our site here: urtech.ca/2026/01/solved-wordpress-publishing-failed-could-not-update-post-in-the-database-with-emojis
#WordPressHelp #WordPressFix
00:00 Introduction to WordPress Publishing Failed error
00:15 Why emojis cause database update issues
00:48 Requirements for WordPress and MySQL versions
01:24 How to take a full backup in cPanel
01:41 Method 1 Converting character set via functions.php
03:00 Testing the fix and checking database encoding
03:55 Why Method 1 might fail due to table prefixes
04:50 Method 2 Forcing emoji encoding as HTML entities
05:30 Verifying the fix and viewing the live post
Frustrated by the "Publishing failed. Could not update post in the database" error in WordPress? This typically happens when you try to save emojis or special characters on a site with an older database structure.
In this tutorial, we walk you through two effective methods to resolve this encoding issue. We cover how to check your MySQL requirements, how to safely back up your site via cPanel, and how to use simple code snippets in your functions.php file to fix the problem permanently. Whether you want to upgrade your character set to utf8mb4 or use an HTML entity fallback, this guide has you covered.
You've got a modern version of MySQL or MariaDB, you're running the latest WordPress, and everything is humming along—until you try to hit Update on a post containing an emoji (like 💡 or ✅). Then you get the dreaded: "Updating failed. Could not insert post into the database."
This isn't a WordPress bug; it's a legacy database collation issue preventing modern 4-byte characters from being saved. The root cause is that your database is still configured for the old utf8mb3 character set, which only supports 3 bytes per character. Emojis require 4 bytes.
*** SCRIPT FOR ONE TIME UPGRADE OF DATABASE
YouTube will not allow the GREATER-THAN-SIGN in this text description box, soooo, I published the scripts on our site here: urtech.ca/2026/01/solved-wordpress-publishing-failed-could-not-update-post-in-the-database-with-emojis
#WordPressHelp #WordPressFix
00:00 Introduction to WordPress Publishing Failed error
00:15 Why emojis cause database update issues
00:48 Requirements for WordPress and MySQL versions
01:24 How to take a full backup in cPanel
01:41 Method 1 Converting character set via functions.php
03:00 Testing the fix and checking database encoding
03:55 Why Method 1 might fail due to table prefixes
04:50 Method 2 Forcing emoji encoding as HTML entities
05:30 Verifying the fix and viewing the live post
