Charset declaration is missing or occurs too late in the HTML

jbob · July 3, 2026, 9:02am

A character encoding declaration is required. It can be done with a <meta> tag in the first 1024 bytes of the HTML or in the Content-Type HTTP response header. Learn more about declaring the character encoding.

The UTF Charset declaration appears on my pages around character 1800

If a character is a byte … then we need too be at the very top … so as to make Google happy

jbob · July 3, 2026, 9:11am

Conversely, Google wants …

… html.scroll-smooth

to appear within one of the ‘landmark areas’ eg: head, body, footer … and it doesn’t

Pegasus · July 3, 2026, 9:56am

You can fix this yourself in the Project Settings → Template section.

Fuellemann · July 3, 2026, 10:07am

Or in the htacces with:

RewriteEngine On

# HTTP Content-Types
AddCharset UTF-8 .html

jbob · July 3, 2026, 10:16am

Great - thanks guys .. I’ll try switching things around and see if Pagespeed is happier … and it all still works : )

pumpkin · July 3, 2026, 9:41pm

Should that not be the default setting by elements?

jbob · July 3, 2026, 9:52pm

I think so as the UTF Charset declaration must be within the ‘first 1024 bytes’ (see screenshot in first post) - otherwise it fails to be recorded as present. By default it seems to appear 1700 - 1800 bytes in

jbob · July 3, 2026, 9:55pm

'Course I might be totally misunderstanding. Either way now, no error in Pagespeed : )