Why you should remove Font Awesome from WordPress

Don't get me wrong: Font Awesome is brilliant. The icons are awesome, but...

Despite Font Awesome's enormous popularity and the fact that it offers a huge selection of high-quality icons, there are good reasons why you might want to remove it from your WordPress installation. Especially when it comes to optimizing your website's loading times, Font Awesome, as useful as it may be, can create unnecessary load.

In this article, I'll show you why and when it might make sense to forgo Font Awesome and what alternatives you can use to improve the performance of your website.

What is Font Awesome?

Font Awesome is one of the most popular icon toolkits worldwide and is used on over 321,000 websites.

With more than 1,600 free and 7,800 pro icons, it offers a comprehensive collection that can be seamlessly integrated into various design concepts.

Why you should remove Font Awesome

1. Performance optimization

Font Awesome offers a lot of icons (and they are really good), but: It adds additional CSS and JavaScript files to your website, which significantly increases the loading time of your pages.

Website speed is a crucial factor for user experience and SEO ranking, so removing Font Awesome can significantly improve your site's performance.

2. Reducing HTTP requests

Each additional file that needs to be loaded increases the number of HTTP requests. By removing Font Awesome, you reduce these requests, resulting in faster loading times and improving your website's overall performance.

3. Security aspects

Like any additional library, Font Awesome can introduce potential security vulnerabilities. By removing unnecessary plugins and scripts, you can minimize your website's attack surface and increase security.

4. Better maintainability

If you don't use all of Font Awesome's icons, removing the entire library can simplify your website maintenance. Fewer dependencies mean fewer potential issues with updates and compatibility.

5. Use alternative solutions

There are numerous modern and efficient alternatives to Font Awesome that consume fewer resources while still offering a wide selection of icons. These alternatives are often easier to integrate and offer better performance.

So you should choose an alternative or (even better) use .svg.

Alternatives to Font Awesome

If you still want to use icons on your WordPress website, there are several alternatives you can consider:

1. Iconify

Offering over 100,000 vector icons, Iconify is a modern alternative to traditional icon fonts. It's lightweight and easy to integrate with WordPress.

2. Feather Icons

Feather is a collection of open-source icons characterized by their simplicity and accessibility. They are ideal for minimalist designs.

3. Material Icons

Google's Material Icons offer a wide range of customizable icons that perfectly align with Material Design principles. They're versatile and easy to implement.

4. Bootstrap Icons

Bootstrap Icons is a free, high-quality, and open icon library with over 1,500 icons. They can be easily integrated into various projects.

Remove Font Awesome – How to do it

It all depends on how Font Awesome is integrated. It might be related to your theme or the plugin. If you're using the plugin:

Step 1: Disable the Font Awesome plugin

Go to your WordPress dashboard Plugins > Installed Plugins. Search for the Font Awesome plugin and click on Deactivate.

Step 2: Delete the Font Awesome plugin

After the plugin is deactivated, click Deleteto completely remove it from your website.

Step 3: Remove manually included code

If you manually integrated Font Awesome into your theme, you will need to remove the corresponding code from your theme files.

1. Open Theme Editor: Go to Design > Theme Editor.
2. Edit Header.php: Search for the -area and remove the Font Awesome script tags, e.g.:htmlCopy code
3. Update file: Save the changes by clicking Update file click.

Step 4: Clean up the functions

If you are using Font Awesome via the functions.php of your theme, remove the corresponding code.

1. Open functions.php: Go to Design > Theme Editor and open the functions.php-File.
2. Remove code: Search for the code that includes Font Awesome, e.g.: phpCopy codeadd_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'tthq_add_custom_fa_css'); function tthq_add_custom_fa_css() { wp_enqueue_style( 'custom-fa', 'https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.0.6/css/all.css' ); } Remove this code.
3. Update file: Save the changes.

Steps after removal

After removing Font Awesome, you should make sure your website continues to function correctly:

1. Check your pages: Make sure no icons are missing or displayed incorrectly.
2. Replace missing icons: If specific icons are required, replace them with icons from the alternatives listed above.
3. Optimize your website further: Use the performance gains to make further optimizations, such as compressing images or caching.

Font Awesome is undoubtedly a powerful and versatile icon toolkit (I use it occasionally myself) that provides valuable services to many WordPress users. However, there are good reasons why you might want to remove it from your WordPress website, especially with regard to performance, security, and maintainability. Fortunately, there are numerous alternatives available that consume fewer resources while still offering a wide range of high-quality icons.

By removing Font Awesome and switching to more efficient solutions, you can improve your website's loading times, increase security, and simplify maintenance. Carefully consider which solution best suits your needs and optimize your WordPress website for a better user experience and higher search engine visibility.

If you have any further questions or need help with the implementation, don't hesitate to contact us or follow our next tutorials!