Docs/Features

Google Font Localization

Automatically download and serve Google Fonts from your own server to avoid blocked requests from China.

Why Localize Google Fonts?#

Google services — including fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com — are blocked by the Great Firewall of China. When your WordPress theme or plugins load Google Fonts, Chinese visitors experience timeouts and broken typography. This can add 10–30 seconds to page load times or cause the page to hang entirely.

Speed in China solves this by downloading the font files from Google and serving them directly from your own server. Chinese visitors load the fonts from your domain instead of Google's blocked servers.

Enabling Google Font Localization#

Go to Speed in China → Optimizations in your WordPress admin.

Find the Google Font Localization section.

Toggle the setting to Enable.

Once enabled, the plugin immediately begins intercepting Google Font requests on page load.

How It Works#

When Google Font localization is enabled, the plugin does the following on every page load:

  1. Scans enqueued stylesheets — Checks all WordPress-registered CSS files for URLs containing fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com.
  2. Downloads the CSS — Fetches the Google Fonts CSS file (using a browser-like User-Agent to get modern woff2 format).
  3. Downloads individual font files — Parses the CSS and downloads each referenced font file from fonts.gstatic.com.
  4. Saves locally — Stores everything in wp-content/uploads/sic-fonts/ with content-hashed filenames.
  5. Rewrites URLs — Replaces the original Google Font URLs with your local server URLs throughout the CSS.

This feature is free. Google Font localization is available on all plans, including the free version.

Caching & Auto-Refresh#

Downloaded font files are cached on your server for 30 days. After 30 days, the next page load will re-download fresh copies. This ensures you always have up-to-date font files without manual intervention.

The cache directory is: wp-content/uploads/sic-fonts/

Font Detection#

The plugin detects Google Fonts loaded by any source — your theme, plugins, or even manual enqueues. It scans both frontend (wp_enqueue_scripts) and admin (admin_enqueue_scripts) hooks.

Detected fonts are shown in the Optimizations tab, listing each font's handle (WordPress stylesheet handle), URL, and detected font families.

Clearing the Font Cache#

To force a fresh download of all font files:

Go to Speed in China → Optimizations.

Click the Clear Font Cache button.

This deletes all files in wp-content/uploads/sic-fonts/. Fonts will be re-downloaded on the next page load.

Disabling Localization#

Toggle the setting back to Disable in the Optimizations tab. Google Fonts will revert to loading from Google's servers. The local font files remain in the cache directory but are no longer used. You can manually delete wp-content/uploads/sic-fonts/ via FTP/SFTP if desired.

Hardcoded Google Fonts — If your theme loads Google Fonts via hardcoded <link> tags in the HTML (instead of using WordPress's wp_enqueue_style), the plugin cannot detect or replace those. Check with your theme developer if fonts still load from Google after enabling localization.