Back in the day, before the Internet (yes there was a time when the magic Interwebs didn t exist and people made phone calls and sent letters) one of the default, go-to fonts was Helvetica. Totally fine, but totally boring. Then Arial became the norm and if you re really old school Bookman or Times New Roman were the defacto font you used.
Essentially the same situation exists in the world of WordPress blogs. The defacto font you get when you build your WordPress blog is totally fine. Utilitarian. Gets the job done. But you don t want to use the same old, same old boring font that the next guy is using. You want something unique. Something cool.
No More Boring Fonts!
There s a myriad of fonts out there that can better express you, your brand, your message. Calibri. Chalkboard. Monaco. Verdana. Just don t use Comic Sans because all your designer friends will make fun of you. The options exist that if you want to get all crazy geeky sophisticated you can use code to customize your WordPress blog font. That s a discussion for another time.
For now we re going to discuss four plugins that let you play with the different aspects of your font. The style, the size, the color.
WordPress Google Font plugin, one of the most popular and coolest of WP plugins. The introduction of the Google free font directory was a landmark event in web typography. Granted font plugins like FontBurner.com did exist, but the font selection for your basic blogger was limited at best. The Google Directory has hundreds of mind-blowing fonts to choose from and the directory is growing like gangbusters.
The WP Google Font plugin is more than just a directory of fonts. While the plugin adds the necessary Google code, the user is also able to assign Google fonts to particular CSS elements of the site from within the WP admin. It also enables you to target the Google fonts from style sheet of your theme.
This revolutionary WP plugin allows you to see changes as you make them. How great is that No coding involved. You re accustomed to clicking on content, dragging and dropping. Why should this be any different The plugin is built to recognize whatever you click on.
Other plugins essentially make you wait to see the your changes once you ve hit update. Seeing the changes as you make then allows you to tweak the look and feel of the font. You can see the size and color changes right away.
Another one stop plugin from WordPress. Fontmeister grabs fonts from Font Squirrel, Fontdeck, Google Web Fonts and Typekit for you to use in any WordPress theme.
Trying out different web fonts in WordPress can actually be fun and make you feel like a creative rock star. Typecase is another incredible plugin that enables you to browse, find and select fonts to add to your site from Google Web Fonts.
Play around with the available fonts. Be creative. Pick a font that reflects who you are. It s easy to get caught up in the coolness of fonts. Before you know it you may want to get your hands dirty and tackle customizing your font with specific code and improving your SEO ratings.
