Database default Characterset question

[gothic]

Guys, this is simply an enquiry.
When installing vBulletin software I have never set a default characterset, and have never had problems.
Recently I have updated one of my local development machines to Apache 2.2.4, php 5.2.0 and MySQL 5.0.27.
The default language of my hosted installation is ''latin1_general_ci'' but the local installation has a default language of 'latin1_swedish_ci'.
The question is, should I set a default language when creating the vB database, and secondly, where in MySQL (or php) am I able to set a default characterset?
Many thanks in anticipation.

[Mike Sullivan]

latin1_general and latin1_swedish are basically the same thing. The latter gets translated into the former when you run a specific MySQL upgrade script.

If the default is any sort of latin1, then you're set. You don't need to change anything.

To change the default in MySQL, you'd actually need root-level access. You can override the default with queries, though you won't need to do that in your case.

[gothic]

Understood, many thanks for the reply.