Wordpress Directory

I’m going to explain how the “Google Fonts WordPress Plugin” works. If there’s one thing that’s been a constraint for building web sites for a decade now – it’s been what fonts you can use in a web site. Your computer might have dozens – if not hundreds of fonts available, but if you use them in a web page (or WordPress) – nobody can see the pages they way you design them (unless they have the same font installed).

So, most web sites stick to the same core fonts:

• Arial
• Times New Roman
• Georgia
• Verdana

The only way around this (in the past) has been one of these methods:

• Use Flash to embed and display the text
• Use a plugin that creates images on the fly for text
• Manually create images yourself and use them in place of text
• Use one of many javascript “font embedding” kits

Google came out with a service this year called “Google fonts”. By embedding a small script in your site, you can use any of their fonts on your site – and everyone can see them (without having to have the font on their system)! To make matters easier, there’s a WordPress Google Fonts Plugin that you can install to take care of everything for you.

In the image above, you can see the plugin options (click for large view). You can choose any of the currently available google fonts (more are added all the time), and then you can assign it to particular elements. You can assign for example headline fonts in “font 1 options”, and then paragraphs in “font 2 options”, etc. If for some reason that changes don’t take, then you can just enter the proper CSS code right there in the plugin setup screen for each font (as in the example).

In the image above (click for full view) you can see the fonts in action on a web site – here we’re using “Crimson Text” for the headings and page text. I installed and configured the plugin for a client – visit French Furniture: Vintage Revival if you want to check it out live.

If you’re not a do-it-yourselfer and need your blog customized – visit our corporate site: JTPratt Media