Font Burner WordPress plugin: Powerful, easy to use – and dangerous

Written by jonathansoroko on October 25, 2009 - 1 Comment
Categories: Fonts, Layout and Styling

The Font Burner Control Panel plugin seems to be the creation of one Adrian Hanft, a/k/a Adrian3, but more properly, Adrian E. Hanft, III (from “About” page). This terrific plugin lets you:

  • Change heading fonts in WordPress (h1 through h4);
  • choose from over one thousand (1,000) and growing non-commercial fonts;
  • requires no code writing

Plus – it lets you do even more - change color style and alignment for headings, headings containing links visited and not visited. It does even more than what’s promised: the “future” features have already been added. but the developers have apparently made big improvement to the software, but neglected to update their FAQ. Font Burner » Frequently Asked Questions promises “new features” in the future which seem to already exist in the plugin. This is rather like the Cheshire cat; we’ve often seen promises without delivery, but not delivery without announcement.

The Instructions Page (heading2)

The Instructions Page a/k/a the “How-To” page on the navbar describes the  steps necessary to use Font Burner:

Step 1: Find a font (h4)

Search through the fonts on Font Burner until you find the perfect font for your site

Step 2: Copy the embed code (h4)

At the bottom of the font’s page you will see the embed code. This is the magical code that will transform your website’s type.

Step 3: Paste the code into your website (h4)

The final step is to paste the Font Burner code right before the body tag  in your web pages HTML. That’s it! If you want to customize your typography further or run into and trouble check out our FAQ page.

The FAQ page (a/k/a the “help” page on the nav bar) is where one of the the additional functions is described – using Font Burner to change the font on body text: ((It’s clear that this depends in part on theme style sheet; I’ve been writing this while the Frugal Theme by Eric Hamm was active – and the body text doesn’t change, but the other functions in the plugin work perfectly. So we’ll test that function in other posts). NB: we’ve now run it in several themes – including K2 and the WordPress default theme.

To change the font on something other than a headline you need to wrap the text in a “class” tag. For example, if you are want to change some text to the font, “Alba Super” you would do something like this:

<div class=”alba_super”>Your text here</div>

This text should appear in the font “Super Alba”

Depending on your stylesheet is set up, you may have to play with this method a bit to get it working.

Here’s an example changing headings fonts (I’ve put heading levels in parentheses; that’s my content, not the plugin):

What is Lorem Ipsum? (Heading 3)

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

An actual paragraph of Lorem Ipsum, courtesy of Lipsum.com: (h3)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed velit erat, faucibus eget dictum quis, tempor sed libero. Nunc tellus tortor, tincidunt id tristique a, varius vel libero. Sed ullamcorper convallis turpis, ut porta enim blandit eget. Sed sit amet nisi sapien. Nullam aliquam ultricies congue. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Duis et arcu nisl. Integer auctor, erat vel scelerisque auctor, lacus elit fringilla dui, blandit pharetra nisi leo at turpis. Proin sit amet magna quis eros rhoncus ornare ut a purus. Curabitur mollis magna vel enim placerat sit amet pulvinar metus porta. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Nullam posuere, quam et placerat aliquet, leo nibh gravida nibh, et tincidunt felis augue et sem. Vivamus quis urna et magna consectetur feugiat. Duis ac turpis pulvinar tortor egestas fermentum sed eu metus. Pellentesque pharetra, sapien sed accumsan faucibus, lacus eros faucibus est, non mattis odio est nec leo. Quisque tincidunt, massa sagittis pharetra sollicitudin, quam quam pretium tortor, sed bibendum ligula dolor quis odio. Vestibulum bibendum, justo commodo ultrices pharetra, urna diam egestas urna, at adipiscing orci magna id dolor. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Integer sed tincidunt lacus. Duis vitae mattis neque.

Why did we say “dangerous”?

Because, like any new tool or toy (the distinction sometimes being hard to make; and it’s a good thing, usually, to like your tools, to the extent that  it prompts one to practice using their tools, and explore their limits), you’ll be tempted to use it. A lot. And who among us can honestly say they’ve never had an experiment with new fonts turn into an aesthetic misfire? (Well, not me, anyway).
Does this text appear in a different font?
You can find information about Font Burner Control Panel here; or on the WordPress.org Plugins Directory here. In current versions of WP, it can be installed by using Plugins | Install New Plugins | Search and search for “font burner.”
Tags: ,

One Response to “Font Burner WordPress plugin: Powerful, easy to use – and dangerous”

Comments

Read below or add a comment...

  1. Joni Mueller
    November 24, 2009 at 10:49 pm

    Back, Devil-Man! What a great find! But you are right, a dangerous one for a font addict like myself. :) I have been using WP-Cufon and TTF-Titles to achieve this effect and they both have limitations. This looks very promising!

Leave A Comment...