- The document discusses using web fonts in WordPress, including what web fonts are, why they are useful, and how to implement them in WordPress themes. It covers options for using commercial services, free services like Google Fonts and Font Squirrel, or generating font kits yourself from Font Squirrel. Tips are provided on testing, licensing, and formatting web fonts.

1. Using Web Fonts in
WordPress
Rindy Portfolio
WordCamp New York City
June 9, 2012

2. Using Web Fonts in WP | WCNYC 2012 | Rindy
Portfolio
Summary
• What web fonts are
• Why they are awesome
• How to use them in your themes
• Further discovery

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Who I am
• Just another guy using WordPress
• Started CrosscutSoftware.com in 2009
• Tadpole Collective - Tadpole.cc
launching today!
Who I am not
• A design expert
• A typography expert

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"Web Design is 95%
Typography"
-Oliver Reichenstein, Information Architects, 2006
via Sara Cannon, WCNYC 2010

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The Old Days
Any font you want, as long as it's web-safe
font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;

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The Next Step
Embedding text in images
Drawbacks
• Images are heavier than text
• Changes to text must be made in image editor
• Less accessible

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Web Fonts to the Rescue
• The somewhat obvious solution:
• Serve fonts from the server, just like
everything else on the web
• Hesitancy based on copyrights, rendering
• TrueType (.ttf), Open Type (.otf) Embedded
OpenType (.eot) and Web Open Font Format
(.woff) are formats designed to address
these issues

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@font-face
• The technique that saved us

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Options
• Commercial services
• Free services
• Do It Yourself!

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Commercial Services
@font-face Face Off
Smashing magazine review (2010)
A List Apart resources

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Commercial Considerations
• Price - not just the cost but the model
• Available fonts
• Delivery method
• Ease of setup - is there a WP plugin?

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@font-face Face Off

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Free Services
Google Web Fonts
Font Squirrel

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Google Fonts
• Choose the fonts you want by adding them to your
"collection"
• Google generates the code
• Add this to your site's code - HTML or CSS
• OR, use the WP Google Fonts plugin

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Font Squirrel
• Download the fonts that you want
• @font-face kits!

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Do It Yourself - Font Squirrel
• Generate your own @font-face kit

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@font-face kit contents
• Font files into a font folder within your theme
• Stylesheet lines copied into your style.css
• Don't forget to update the paths

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Tips
• When testing, be sure your site is calling the web
font, and not your local copy
• You are responsible for following the EULA
• Watch out for bold and italic
• Keep learning!

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Further Discovery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_typography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenType
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Open_Font_Format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(Web_Typography)
http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2009/10/30/how-to-use-css-font-face/
http://nicewebtype.com/notes/2009/10/20/where-to-get-web-fonts/
http://paulirish.com/2010/font-face-gotchas/
http://paulirish.com/2009/bulletproof-font-face-implementation-syntax/
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/forum/discussion/129/eulas-end-user-licenses-agreements

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Addendum
This information was added after the presentation. Thanks to David Balogh
(@r303blue) and Hugo Baeta (@hugobaeta) for their generous help! :)
• Check Robert Bringhurst's book The Elements of Typographic Style, and a
companion website for web typography: http://webtypography.net/intro/
• Font weights can be tricky. The standard regular is 400 with bold being 700.
David Balogh took Font Squirrel's Open Sans fontkit and modified its demo using
font-family and numerical weights, and made it available on his dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/imhb6xdap0pl1hm/open-sans-
fontfacekit%20%28DB_Mod%29.zip
• Font Managers for mocks in design programs (plenty others…):
o Suitcase
o Linotype FontExplorer
o Apple's Default Fontbook
• Cufon is a kind of vector image replacement for font files - web fonts kind of
overtook the technology and it never really caught on.
• My Fonts does a great job of collecting fonts from several sources and has them
tagged based on style - useful for searching!

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Keep in Touch
Rindy Portfolio
@portfola
rindy@tadpole.cc