How to Remove Unwanted Fonts From Your Squarespace Website
Screenshot of Site Styles Font Selection
‘Font on Site’ in the Site Styles font selection tool is a list of all the fonts that are being downloaded for display.
When there are font families listed there that you didn’t choose, or otherwise don’t recognize, they’re probably being specified on a page or block you haven’t yet added or enabled. You may ask, “Why is Squarespace downloading the font If I’m not using the page on which it is specified?” Well, more on that in a minute, but there are reasons. The real point is though, if you want your site to load as fast as possible, you want to limit the number of font families that download.
“Why is Squarespace downloading the font if I’m not using the page on which it is specified?”
Demo Content
When a Squarespace designer creates a new variant of a template framework for public release, every single Site Style option is configured, assigned and selected to serve the target persona. This goes for site wide options like navigation and typography, as well as the unique options for each collection type. So when you create a site using a template and create a new blog (for example), it’s already styled and ready to go – it totally matches the rest of the site.
For the purposes of this blog post, we’re really interested in fonts. Consistent typography across an entire Squarespace Template is one of the things that makes them so appealing. It’s not like when you add a new blog, it starts with Arial or something, the font has already been selected for you by a thoughtful designer, and that’s a great thing when you don’t want to change the font families that have been selected.
The fonts are everywhere
Fig 1.1: Screenshot of Jasper
Let’s say you start a new site using a template called Jasper – part of the York family (Fig 1.1). The Site title and navigation are using a font family called Chivo. Chivo is nice, but you’d rather use Europa. So you jump into Site Styles and change the fonts on the homepage to Europa. Now it looks just the way you want. Then you dive into one of the Projects and add all your artwork, and again, change Chivo to Europa in Site Styles.
Success your site is done and it’s using Europa. Yet, you haven’t added any blogs or galleries, no events or album collections. So, Squarespace is still downloading Chivo because they are assigned to things in all those other collections as part of the template. There is a way though, to make Squarespace stop downloading Chivo.
You can do it, but it’ll take some work.
Use Sample Content to specify Only Your Fonts
Fig 1.2: Pages menu with sample content added
In the Not Linked section of the Pages menu, create a sample collection for every page type available in your template. For Jasper, you’ll need Page, Blog, Gallery, Project, Events, Album, and an Index. Now comes the work part I mentioned earlier.
Jasper has an Index Page so we start there first (in this example) we name it ‘Sample Content Index’. Inside the Index, we add a Layout Page sample and add any block that contains text to the page. My default list of blocks for this exercise are: All three Headings, some paragraphs, two Form blocks (one with lightbox mode enabled), a Quote block, Newsletter block, and all three Button block sizes.
Next, for each of the other sample collections you’ve made (Fig. 1.2), add some basic sample content to each so all your text elements are available in Site Styles. Then, while still viewing the collection, navigate in the main menu back to Home -> Design -> Site Styles and find every single option that contains a font choice and change Chivo to Europa.
When you’re all done, Chivo shouldn’t be listed in the “Font on Site” section of Site Styles font selection tool (and not downloaded for the site anymore). I told you it would take some work.
To be on the safe side, keep these sample collections in Not Linked in case you want to change all your fonts in the future – without still retaining all your previous selections. It’s also a good idea to hide these sample pages from search engines in the SEO tab.
