When new fileds are created as variable characters they get stored as latin1_swedish_ci as default. To change the default collation users will have to manually select the collation of their choice from the mysql admin interface such as in the case of phpmyadmin or will have to denote it in sql queries.
To make a specific collation as the default, other option to give mysql an indication of it by having the needed collation name in my.cnf (mysql configuration) as shown below
Edit my.cnf:
[mysqld]
collation_server=latin1_general_ci
MySql command to set collation type when creating database is given below:
Latin1 encoding
CREATE DATABASE sampledb DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_general_ci;
UTF-8 encoding
CREATE DATABASE sampledb DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
Once the encoding for the database is set, fields associated with the tables in our new database will take up default collation as the one set during the database creation.
