In the summer of 2022, there was a massive wave of warnings in connection with the use of Google Fonts, in which various law firms attempted to extract a few euros from unsuspecting website operators.
Other blog articles deal with the aforementioned waves of warning letters in much more detail and I don't want to go into this topic any further here. Instead, today I would like to show you various ways in which you can avoid becoming the target of such a warning campaign against Google Fonts users in the first place.
You basically have three options:
- You waive the use of Google Fonts
- You download the Google Fonts used and upload them again to your own web server in the EU and thus provide the fonts locally yourself
- You use a third-party provider who hosts the Google Fonts for you on a web server located in the EU
Do without Google Fonts?
If you've landed on this blog article via Google search, I'm assuming that #1 isn't an option for you. Not for me either, to be honest - at least in most web projects. Google fonts are hugely popular. That's understandable when you look at the variety on offer. And they are also free to use. I would like Google to simply provide a web server in the EU that is harmless in terms of data protection and that you could choose as the server source for your own site. This would help everyone and the GDPR problem would be solved without font users in the EU having to bypass the Google service.
Provide Google Fonts locally
Many WordPress themes now include the option of uploading your own fonts and making them available locally. There are also plenty of plugin solutions for this. The Divi theme also offers the Option to upload your own fonts.
If you want to have more control over the font files and the font-face declaration in the CSS of the website, upload the desired fonts to your own web server via FTP or SFTP and then write your own font-face rules in the stylesheets used.
I don't want to go into this option here either, as it has already been explained in detail in many other blog posts.
Use third-party providers: Bunny Fonts!
In order to use a data protection-compliant provider for your Google Fonts, the product Bunny Fonts. With Bunny Fonts it is possible to use Google fonts, but to have them delivered by the Bunny Fonts servers in the EU and not by the Google servers. The operators of the Bunny Fonts service are based in Slovenia and therefore within the EU: BunnyWay d.o.o., Cesta komandanta Staneta 4A, 1215 Medvode, Slovenia.
Simply install and activate my plugin "Bunny Fonts for Divi"which is available free of charge in the official WordPress repository and can be easily installed via your WordPress backend under Plugins.
Then deactivate the optimization for loading Google Fonts in the Performance tab in the Divi theme options. If you leave this option activated, the Divi Theme will insert a so-called link prefetch connection to the Google Fonts servers in the head of your website. We would like to prevent this.
With this solution, you can continue to use all Google Fonts in your Divi Builder without delivering the fonts to your website visitors via Google.
If you have any questions, please use the comment function at the end of this blog article.
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