Database Encoding

For running your MySQL Database, make sure you have the UTF8 Character set enabled.

RDS does not do this by default, refer to the end of this thread on what you need to do: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=38627. Basically all of your character_* params need to be set to utf8, and your collase needs to be utf8_unicode_ci.

If you fail to heed this warning, here's a Rake Task to convert it. https://gist.github.com/mperham/2045565