I am facing a critical issue with the Amelia Pro plugin (v8.2) after upgrading my site to WordPress 6.8 and later downgrade to 6.7 the issue still persist. The main observation is the dashboard is not opening, it getting stuck on the amelia loader page. 

This is my console error while opening dashboard:

API request: https://hiranyahasta.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=wpamelia_api&call=/entities&wpAmeliaNonce=174797e22d&lite=true&types=locations,employees,categories,custom_fields,tags,packages,resources,coupons&page=calendar

Response:

{"message":"Unable to find by id in AmeliaBooking\Infrastructure\Repository\User\ProviderRepository SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1267 Illegal mix of collations (utf8mb4_unicode_ci,COERCIBLE) and (utf8mb4_general_ci,COERCIBLE) for operation '>='"}

And sometime it is working, this is happening with this API only,

So I deep dive and here is what I have done,  

• Updated all Amelia plugin tables and columns to use utf8mb4_unicode_ci

• Verified entire database has no remaining utf8mb4_general_ci (via information_schema.COLUMNS)

• Tried forcing collation with SET collation_connection at the PHP session level

• Even patched your ProviderRepository.php file to manually cast comparisons using CONVERT(... USING utf8mb4) COLLATE ...

• The error still persists intermittently — especially on the /entities API calls

The plugin appears to use >= or <= string comparisons (e.g., for date/time checks) without enforcing collation at the query level. When PHP injects a dynamic string, MySQL treats it as utf8mb4_general_ci, which conflicts with utf8mb4_unicode_ci columns — especially under strict SQL modes introduced in recent MariaDB/MySQL versions.

This was never an issue prior to WordPress 6.7.

• Please confirm if this is a known issue and whether a fix or patch is planned for Amelia Pro v8.3+

• If available, kindly provide a patched version of ProviderRepository.php or any temporary override

• If not yet addressed, please escalate to your dev team to patch >= comparisons with proper collation casting

• WordPress: 6.7

• Amelia Pro: 8.2

• PHP: 8.x

• MySQL/MariaDB: 10.6+

• Multisite: No

Thank you for your support — this issue is severely impacting functionality and I appreciate your prompt

Dear Stefan,

Thank you for your prompt response and support — I truly appreciate it.

As the Amelia plugin plays a critical role in our business operations, timely assistance like this means a lot to us. However, I must share that the recent issue did lead to a disruption in service, which unfortunately impacted our business.

To avoid such situations in the future, I have a couple of follow-up questions:

1. Could you please explain the root cause of the issue, so we can better understand what went wrong and how we might detect or prevent similar problems from our side?

2. Is there any way to ensure such issues are less likely to occur again, especially after major WordPress updates?

We rely heavily on Amelia, and proactive measures would help us feel more secure moving forward.

Looking forward to your insights. Thanks again for the quick resolution!

Warm regards,
Hiranya Hasta Team