Feature request: add font preload and local hosting options to the Font Manager

Beta
#1

Hey, these two features would make the Font Manager even better and improve performance.

Preload font option
Allow to enable preload for fonts added through the Font Manager (<link rel="preload" as="style">), in order to avoid render-blocking stylesheets.

Local font hosting option
Allow to automatically download fonts (from Bunny Fonts or Google Fonts) and serve them locally from the site, bypassing third-party CDNs. Ideally, this would include:

  • Automatic generation of @font-face CSS
  • Font subsetting
  • Option to serve WOFF2 only for modern browsers
2 Likes
#2

I think we can add a preload option pretty easily.

Hosting fonts locally and doing all that downloading sounds like a bit of a time investment. Have you ever tried a plugin like this https://wordpress.org/plugins/local-google-fonts/?

2 Likes
#3

That’s amazing, but double-preloading should be avoided. Many users have this set up in Siteground Optimizer on in other ways. Cornerstone cannot reliably check in the backend if frontend has preloaded fonts, except perhaps with AYAX background scan of the front-end, which is probably too much.

An option to manually turn preloading on is OK, perhaps with a a warning for the user to verify if the fonts aren’t already preloaded by another tool.

#4

Indeed, it would be best as an opt-in feature.

#5

Thanks for considering it. I’ll check out that plugin to see if it works nicely with the Font Manager.