Based on the error message, could it be that your admin menu contains emojis or other special characters, for example in menu titles? The plugin does store the menu configuration in the wp_options table (or, in this case, wpdg_options), so if the table doesn’t support those characters, the plugin might not be able to save menu settings.
If possible, try converting the table to utf8mb4 as the message recommends.
Hello Janis,
Thank you for your reply. I don’t use any emoticons or special characters, that’s why I’m a bit confused.
I did find out that when I disable the plugin Post SMTP, the settings are saved correctly. Maybe that’s something to investigate for you?
Thank you, Yolanda
They don’t have to be your emojis or special characters. Some plugins add them to their admin menu titles, and those default titles get saved in the menu configuration along with your custom titles.
Which Post SMTP plugin is that? I tried searching for it, but there are multiple plugins with similar names.
Hi Janes,
I use this plugin
POST SMTP Mailer – Email log, Delivery Failure Notifications and Best Mail SMTP for WordPress
https://nl.wordpress.org/plugins/post-smtp/
Thank you for the link. I installed that plugin on a test site, and it looks like it has an emoji in the title of this submenu: “👉 Get Pro Bundle ➤”. That’s probably the source of the warning you mentioned earlier.
In this case, editing the menu title in AME to remove the emoji won’t help because the plugin saves both the custom title and the default title. I would suggest converting the DB table to utf8mb4.
Hi Janis,
Thanks for your response, but I find it rather strange that I need to convert a WP table for a reason that a plugin can’t save its own options, caused by another plugin. Isn’t there another way to solve this?
Strictly speaking, this is not a plugin issue. The table in question uses an outdated, deprecated character set that cannot properly store the full range of Unicode characters. This cannot be effectively solved in a plugin, but you could work around it by removing plugins and/or data that contain the problematic characters.
WordPress has some documentation on converting character sets:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Converting_Database_Character_Sets
