Q:

Using PHP in HTML pages without messing up Character Encoding

I'm using various php codes in most of html files from our website. I want html files treated as php, thefore I've added this line to the .htaccess

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .html .htm .php

Now, everything is fine, my html files evaluate the php code and i am happy. However my happiness was short lived because this solution created another problem. Character Encoding got messed up and now although i declared 
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> 

characters are being displayed like this on the website

c�nd �ncearc? s? �?i scad?

My question is how can i evaluate php in the html files and NOT messing up my Character Encoding of the Html pages.

Requested to show code:
<h1 class="Normal-P"><span class="Normal-C-C0">&quot; Cele </span><span class="Normal-C-C1">3 MARI GREŞELI</span><span class="Normal-C-C0"> pe care majoritatea le fac atunci când încearcă </span></h1>

<h1 class="Normal-P"><span class="Normal-C-C0">să îşi </span><span class="Normal-C-C1">scadă colesterolul în mod natural </span><span class="Normal-C-C0">&quot;</span></h1>

results in this
Click pe butonul din stanga jos pentru redare....Asteapt? c�teva secunde p�n? cand acest video se �ncarc?

A:

I think what the problem may be now, is the type of editor you are using. 
I created a file with plain Windows Notepad, and it did not show the characters correctly. 
However, when I pasted my codes into Notepad++ and saved it as "Encoding/Encode in UTF-8 without BOM" (byte order mark), 
it displayed correctly. 
Visit notepad-plus-plus.org to download it. It has different encoding formats.

