Wordpress User: Stop Using Google fonts.

I was in a obsessive quest to optimize the speed of my website and finally decide to learn HTML and do my website myself.

During this adventure I happen to fall on some call from my website (wordpress cms) to google for a font.... Hell no.

Issue:

• privacy and security (Google knows about each page view)
• local development or production (no or limited Internet access)
• availability of Google?s servers (some countries block access to Google)
• language support (these fonts have limited characters support)
• performance (Google?s servers are hit on each page view)

Solution can be:

- Disable Google Fonts wordpress plugin.

- Coding yourself and switch to HTML website.

Sources:

Answer is easy. You can turn off (remove) Google font Open Sans by simple, lightweight plugin. Plugin is called Disable Google Fonts. Author of this utility is Milan Dinić. His solution has no settings. Disable Google Fonts works immediately after activation.


Why disable Google fonts?

I don?t understand why Wordpress developers placed fonts.googleapis.com into WP core. Because aesthetics? I do not consider it to be valuable enough. Change of font is small and I do not need super beautiful fonts in admin interface.

Where's the value?
I prefer practical fonts. Sans-serif take less space than Google?s Open Sans and it renters faster. GOS has also limited character support. Too many languages are simply not displayed correctly (Vietnamese, Czech Slovak language).
Privacy matters

I don?t wanna to let Google spy on me even during administration. Every time site is loaded Google knows it and stores my IP address, my geographical locations and other sensible data. I think this is main reason why WP developers agreed and build Google tracking in. It can be subject of some king of compensation scheme (I don?t like this idea).
Performance counts

Too many server requests can make site slow. In core should be just necessary code and ?nice font? certainly does not fulfill this condition.
Removing Google font Open Sans speeded up my Wordpress site a little bit. It?s kind of strange, because Google has good content delivery network (CDN) but I can feel that speed of the installation went up.
In conclusion about Google fonts in WP core

I would like to close this copy with idea, that every problem has a solution. Solution of Open Sans problem in Wordpress is Disable Google Fonts plugin.



Check this out too:

Did you do any before and after speed tests?

It looks like a small paranoia. Google already knows what you are doing. The only issue I had was with country blocking. As for speed, you have to load the fonts in functions.php with load_fonts() function, not just copy/paste the G code in header.

WPRipper said:

It looks like a small paranoia. Google already knows what you are doing.

Click to expand...

How would they know about your site page views and stats if they don't have access to your site? (This only applies if you don't already use GA)

WPRipper said:

As for speed, you have to load the fonts in functions.php with load_fonts() function, not just copy/paste the G code in header.

Click to expand...

Is there any documentation of load_fonts() function? I couldn't find any. I don't see why it would increase your site speed by loading it trough a function instead of html in the header.
If the function doesn't add some javascript and make the end user add the source once the site has already loaded ofc.

W130SN said:

Did you do any before and after speed tests?

Click to expand...

Yes I do. I just install the plugin and test it with/without it.

The fact the line calling to font.googleapis is delete make the number of request inferior and thus faster website loading.

For your font when you the font.googleapis (meaning you install the plugin), your browser use his font by default.

WPRipper said:

It looks like a small paranoia. Google already knows what you are doing. The only issue I had was with country blocking. As for speed, you have to load the fonts in functions.php with load_fonts() function, not just copy/paste the G code in header.

Click to expand...

What are you talking about. Read the articles.

Do you have any cross ref to your claim that google is tracking your site n all? I know google spies but lol this is baseless. Did you face anything from them for having font embedded? Google fonts does indeed have some great fonts which can't be embedded directly due to copyright problems.

congratz for having fired this shit

there is a big problem with this, i don't understand why they started to use it

and plus i guess there is less request used, mean surely a little improvement of speed... idk

Using the plugin now, great tip.

i do agree with this point. Also it lags sometimes. I downloaded them and uploaded in ftp. now its a lot better.

g0g0l said:

Do you have any cross ref to your claim that google is tracking your site n all? I know google spies but lol this is baseless. Did you face anything from them for having font embedded? Google fonts does indeed have some great fonts which can't be embedded directly due to copyright problems.

Click to expand...

Do you have any cross ref to your claim that google is tracking your site n all?

No. But I know that anytime you put a social signal of facebook or G+ it register IP and location with the cooperation of your browser unless you use a not typical browser.

Did you face anything from them for having font embedded?

Of course not.