When it comes to hosting and using fonts on your WordPress site there are a ton of different options. You can host them locally, you can use Google Fonts (most themes these days have Google Fonts built in), or you can use another third-party service like Adobe Fonts. Today we want to dive into a few reasons why hosting local fonts on WordPress can be advantageous. Not only can you have a larger selection of HTML fonts , but sometimes there are performance benefits as well. Check out our detailed tutorial below on how to host your premium fonts locally, as well as any Google Fonts font family.
- What Are Web Fonts?
- Hosting Local vs. Third-Party Fonts
- How to Host Local Fonts in WordPress
What Are Web Fonts?
When you browse someone’s WordPress site, you’ll see two basic types of fonts, web safe fonts or web fonts. Or they could be using a mix of both.
Suggested reading: How to Change the Font in WordPress ?
- Web safe fonts are fonts that are pre-installed on a device or OS. Some examples of web safe fonts include Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New, as well as generic font families like serif, sans-serif (see modern fonts ), and lebanon email list monospace. These are the fonts you’ve seen for many years. See a full list of web safe fonts .
- Web fonts are fonts that are not pre-installed on a device and must be downloaded by the user’s browser before being displayed. Examples In-Depth Guide on of web fonts include Google’s Open Sans and Roboto fonts, as well as Adobe Fonts’ popular Proxima Nova font.
Google Fonts is an open source font directory that has become widely used over the past two years. According to BuiltWith, over 45% of the top 10,000 websites are using Google Fonts on their websites. And if we look at Google Fonts analytics , we can see that they have had over 17 billion page views. That’s a lot! Open Sans and Roboto are their two most used font families, with Roboto seeing a whopping 77% growth over the past year.
Hosting Local vs. Third-Party Fonts
Before we dive into the tutorial it’s important to understand some of the trade-offs between hosting fonts locally and simply using a third-party service. Hosting fonts locally means that you actually have the font files on your own server (and/or copied to the CDN, which is also used for all your other assets). Whereas if you use a third-party, such as Google or Adobe Fonts, you’re just including the fonts by linking to an external asset.
Advantages of Local Sources
1. Wider Selection of Sources
A huge advantage of using local fonts is that you have a much wider selection of fonts ! While third-party services like Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts have large libraries, they can’t compare to premium font stores where you can buy any wordpress vs drupal – which is better premium web font you want and host it on your site. In fact, we’ll be using a premium font in our In-Depth Guide on tutorial below that you can’t get from any third-party service.
2. Can be better integrated
Because of the wider selection of fonts, hosting them locally could allow you to choose a font that better integrates with your branding to maintain consistency across the site. This all depends on your needs and design preferences.
3. Not Having to Rely on Third-Party Services
When you host fonts locally, you don’t have to rely on third-party services or their servers. Services like Adobe Fonts have been cell phone number known to go down, which in turn makes you look bad. Having fewer dependencies on your WordPress site is always better.