New Tool Checks If Google Fonts Are Hosted Locally – WP Tavern

Earlier this 12 months, WordPress’ Themes Staff started urging theme authors to switch to locally hosted fonts after a German courtroom case choice, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted webfonts. Since that ruling, German web site house owners have continued to receive threats of fines for not having their fonts hosted regionally.

The makers of the Fonts Plugin, a industrial product with a free model on WordPress.org, have created a device known as Google Fonts Checker that can assist web site house owners uncover the place their fonts are hosted. The device analyzes any URL entered and if the fonts are hosted by Google, it says “Google Fonts Connection Discovered” with a pink ‘X.’ Websites which are within the clear will present a discover {that a} Google Fonts connection was not discovered:

Google Fonts Checker is helpful for non-technical customers who aren’t positive whether or not their theme or plugins are referencing fonts hosted on Google’s servers. Past delivering the easy connection message, the device scans the web site and returns a listing of the font information used to render the web page, which may be useful in monitoring down the precise extension loading these information.

Greater than 200,000 individuals are utilizing the Fonts Plugin to load property from the Google Fonts Library. Though the Google Fonts Checker device is free to make use of and doesn’t require any private info or login, the free model of the Fonts Plugin doesn’t assist internet hosting fonts regionally. Customers will both must improve to the industrial model or use a special plugin, like Local Google Fonts or the OMGF | Host Google Fonts Locally plugin, each of which carry out this at no cost.

Those that discover a Google Fonts connection utilizing the device can also take into account switching to Bunny Fonts, an open-source, privacy-first net font platform with no monitoring or logging that’s totally GDPR compliant. It could actually act as a drop-in substitute to Google Fonts. The Replace Google Fonts with Bunny Fonts plugin makes it simple to modify.

A few of WordPress’ older default themes are nonetheless loading fonts from Google. A ticket for bundling the fonts with the legacy default themes had patches and was on observe to be included in WordPress 6.1, however ended up getting punted to a future release after it was decided the method wanted extra work. Within the meantime, those that are involved about utilizing Google Fonts in older default themes can use a plugin to host them regionally.