Description
Font loading is one of the largest contributors to Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) on real websites. Peakspire Font Loading Optimizer applies the three highest-impact font fixes, built from hands-on Core Web Vitals engineering on production sites:
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Preload local WOFF2 fonts – Scans your enqueued stylesheets for locally hosted WOFF2 files and adds
<link rel="preload">tags, capped at 4 fonts. Preloaded fonts arrive before the browser discovers them inside CSS files, removing the font round-trip from the critical path. -
Adds
font-display: swapto eligible inline@font-facerules – Rules that already declare an explicitoptional,block,fallback, orautovalue are never touched. Rules without a descriptor getswap, so text renders immediately with the fallback font instead of sitting invisible while web fonts download. -
Remove external Google Fonts (optional) – Dequeues all fonts.googleapis.com requests for sites that have self-hosted their fonts.
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Remove dashicons for visitors (optional) – Dequeues the dashicons stylesheet for logged-out visitors, saving a render-blocking request most themes never use on the front end.
Everything is front-end only and safe to use alongside caching plugins (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, etc.).
Why only local fonts are preloaded
Cross-origin font preloads waste bandwidth when the crossorigin fetch does not match the stylesheet fetch. This plugin deliberately preloads only same-host WOFF2 files, the safe default for virtually all themes that self-host fonts.
Installation
- Upload the
peakspire-font-loadingfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install via the Plugins screen. - Activate the plugin.
- Open Settings Peakspire Font Loading Optimizer. Preload and font-display are on by default; both are recommended.
FAQ
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Which fonts does this preload?
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WOFF2 files hosted on your own domain that are referenced from enqueued external stylesheets, up to a static maximum of 4 per page. Fonts declared inline in the HTML head are deliberately NOT preloaded: the browser already discovers those at parse time, so preloading them adds bandwidth cost without benefit (measured: a ~0.9s LCP regression on an inline-declaring theme before this rule was enforced). This is a deliberate simplicity tradeoff: the plugin does not measure per-page font relevance (paid performance suites do). For most sites with 2-4 font families, the cap is the right size.
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Does this replace a font-localization plugin like OMGF?
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No – it complements one. Localization plugins handle fonts sourced from Google/Bunny CDNs. This plugin handles the other half: the fonts your theme or builder already bundles locally. Use both if you have both.
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Does this work with caching plugins?
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Yes. All changes are front-end output (preload tags and CSS descriptor injection). Nothing modifies your theme files or cache behavior.
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Which fonts get preloaded?
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Only WOFF2 files hosted on your own domain that are referenced from your enqueued stylesheets, up to a maximum of 4. Preloading more fonts typically hurts more than it helps.
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What if my fonts come from Google Fonts?
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Enable the “Remove external Google Fonts” option only after self-hosting your fonts. Sites not ready for that step should leave it off.
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Is the font-display change safe for my design?
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font-display: swap shows the fallback font until your web font loads, then swaps. It is the descriptor Google recommends and the default in most modern themes.
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“Peakspire Font Loading Optimizer” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.3
- Discovery prioritization: same-host stylesheets scanned first; CDN-hosted stylesheets no longer consume scan slots (they cannot yield same-host WOFF2 URLs)
- Real-theme tested on Twenty Twenty-Four: external CSS fonts correctly preloaded, inline declarations correctly skipped
- PHP 7.4 literal execution verified (Docker php:7.4-cli, lint + token scan)
1.0.2
- Security hardening: SSRF defense (private/loopback/link-local IP deny-list before fetch), cache-hit re-validation (same-host + is_string on every cached entry), corrupt-lock-value recovery (stale-reclaimable, not live-forever)
- Availability: preg_replace NULL guard on backtrack-limit exhaustion (never blanks a page)
- CSS correctness: @font-face rewrite scoped to
- Measured: zero LCP regression on inline-font themes; preload timing verified on external-CSS pages
1.0.0
- Initial release: WOFF2 preload discovery, global font-display:swap injection, optional Google Fonts removal, optional dashicons removal for guests.