04 November 2009, 20:02

I got the same message. Here is what I did to resolve the issue:

 I created the mahara database as detailed in the instructions choosing collation of

  uft8_unicode_ci

 After the database was created I clicked on the  database name, then "operations" from the phpadmin menu at the top.

 There is a collation dropbox at the bottom of the screen. It was set to latin. I set it to   uft8_unicode_ci selected "go" and I was able to proceed with the install.

05 November 2009, 2:16

go to the database that you created, click on sql so you have the window to enter code an type

alter database YOURDATABASE character set utf8

and click on go..this should resolve it..