Comments on: Use Whatever Font You Please On WordPress

By: brandaggio

brandaggio — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:25:11 +0000

@Tyssen – The RIAA are a rare breed. Cumulatively, the RIAA have had limited success in their witch hunts, wasted enormous financial resources and have a nominal chance of collecting on any huge reward, in the scant chance that is the judgment.

I am not suggesting someone not keep their nose clean, just that people with fairly low profile sites in all likelihood have essentially zero to worry about.

Again – anyone ever heard of anyone getting in trouble yet using Cufon with some random font? Anyone? When and if it starts to happen, perhaps that would be cause for some concern.

By: Font Wiz

Font Wiz — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:16:43 +0000

The good news is that there are many options, including Cufon, that can let you specific the fonts you want to use on a website, and then copy the fonts from your desktop computer up to the server for subsequent automatic downloading to users viewing your site. But as others have pointed out, you cannot make any assumptions about the fonts you choose to use in this manner. The fonts you have on your computer typically cannot be copied onto other computers – or posted to websites either for sharing or for formatting on websites with Cufon, sIFR or other techniquest with @font-face.

For example, the fonts that come with Windows and Microsoft office can only be used with websites in the EOT format (and not with Cufon or sIFR). I just read that one font foundry has announced they will be offering EOT font licenses, so most likely other fonts will soon be available for designers to use as well with web sites.

By: doodlebee

doodlebee — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:41:54 +0000

I have cufon on my own site, and have used it on 2 others for clients. I LOVE it. I’ve used different replacement methods (done sIFR and the one that auto-creates .gif images for you) and hands-down cufon is the simplest, easiest font-replacement I’ve used. I do a lo of WordPress sites too, and it’s a breeze to slap it in there.

I *have* heard that it’s not selectable and not seen by SEO – but on both points, Alex, you are wrong. as with sIFR, if the end user has js turned off, they see the regular text (with the regular font) in it’s place. The text is there for SEO just fine (just view the source code – there it is!) and yes, it’s selectable. It just doesn’t turn your selection blue.

And as always, follow the licensing terms for your fonts – be good, people ;)

By: Jennifer Farley

Jennifer Farley — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:13:23 +0000

Alex, this is definitely not the same as making a jpeg banner. You can apply this style once to any tag, class or id and the text will change for all occurances. You would need to make a lot of jpegs to achieve the same effect, which would be incredibly time consuming and most certainly not readable by the search engines.

By: Tyssen

Tyssen — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:45:24 +0000

Have you got any evidence that the text is not seen by search engines because I believe you’re wrong on that point? For instance I visited a number of pages listed on the Cufon demos pages and did a search for the content listed in text replaced by Cufon. In all cases, Google had links back to the page in question, so Google is certainly indexing that content (after all it’s right there in the HTML) so I think your point is entirely inaccurate.

By: Ryan Kirk

Ryan Kirk — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:45:43 +0000

Alex, the text may not appear selectable but it is. Highlight it and copy it and you’ll see that you can paste it into a text editor. Check the source, it is fine for SEO because the text is still there.

By: Stewie

Stewie — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:41:30 +0000

Checked by e-mail at Storm Type Foundry: you can generate and use ST fonts at website, if you purchased the font you want to use, or if you want to use free ST fonts (so Storm Type Foundry fonts license is also cufon-safe). More info

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:52:02 +0000

The text is not selectable and not seen by SEO..

so makes no sense to use this, because its th same as doing my banner in photoshop…

the point of using text instead of banner is due of SEO… although TEXT is always more ugly than banner.. but gives better results in terms of traffic..

this tuto gives no solution since its the same as using a JPEG banner..

By: Tyssen

Tyssen — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:03:00 +0000

I’m sure those suburban mothers who downloaded music illegally probably thought they weren’t big enough to get fined either, but they still did.

By: brandaggio

brandaggio — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:24:33 +0000

Does any know of a single case of someone successfully being prosecuted for using a font in this fashion?

If you were a big enough target (successful enough monetarily) to be worth suing (Adobe or some other foundry wouldn’t bother taking someone to court who couldn’t pay) or taking to court I am sure you could afford to by the license for the font/s you need.

If you aren’t, seems like a bunch of worry about something that is about as likely to have happen as getting struck by lightning!

I am all for being above board, but…