Design plays a major role in whether or not visitors will continue to read your content. A poor layout or color scheme could drive away potential sales or stop people from sharing your site on social media.
Typography is part of the design strategy and may prove beneficial when engaging visitors.
Typography has a way of creating a unique look and feel for a website. Different fonts can inspire emotional connections while others simply make the material easy to read. Luckily, there are plenty of typography plugins for WordPress to choose from.
Many are capable of using some of the best free fonts you can find online.
Below are 16 WordPress typography plugins I’ve found that have great potential to make your site awesome. The hardest part is picking the ones that work best with your ideas for design.
1. TinyMCE Advanced
TinyMCE Advanced should be one of the first things you install on WordPress. While the default editing system is good to create basic content, this plugin greatly expands what you can do with your website’s text.
Essentially, it adds a lot of the same elements you would find in word processing applications.
This plugin utilizes a drag-and-drop system that allows users to customize the appearance of the tool while adding or removing different elements. For example, you can add strikethrough and underline buttons with a quick drag of the mouse.
TinyMCE Advanced even comes with emoticons that you can place directly into your posts.
2. Better Font Awesome
Better Font Awesome allows users to integrate various typographic plugins such as Font Awesome, CSS, shortcodes and the TinyMCE icon generator. The end result is a tool that gives you control over everything from fonts to placing icons throughout your content.
What this tool does is combine the shortcodes that other plugins generate for typography and icons into a single searchable database you can use directly from the WordPress editor screen.
It adds a button next to “Add Media” above the text editor for quick and easy access. Once you select the icon you want, Better Font Awesome does the rest.
3. Use Any Font
A lot of you probably have custom fonts or something special you downloaded from the Internet. Use Any Font gives you the ability to apply those files without coding knowledge. You connect your site through an API to the developer’s server, upload the fonts and then use them on your website.
Use Any Font supports TTF, OTF and WOFF font file types. Once uploaded, they are converted automatically to use in your content.
The plugin also supports uploaded fonts directly from WordPress, SiteOrigin’s Page Builder and several other systems. Once the conversions are made, your custom fonts are then saved on your own web server.
4. Easy Google Fonts
The Google Font database is one of the largest collections of high-quality elements on the Internet. The Easy Google Fonts plugin lets you tap into that collection to place directly into any theme.
It comes with various settings and tools to create a custom appearance that you can view in real-time.
One element many people may appreciate is the ability to customize each header type. Using elements such as Header 1 or Header 2 can essentially have a different style, and this can be done from the plugin’s customizer so you can see how the changes appear on your posts and pages in WordPress.
5. Easy Customizable Text Widget
Your main content area isn’t the only place where typography can look stellar. The Easy Customizable Text Widget provides a variety of features to let you alter the appearance of the sidebar addition.
Google fonts, padding adjustments, buttons and colors can all be changed with a few clicks of the mouse.
Background images, pin icons and the content setup are all features this plugin provides. It nearly turns your text widget into a micro-landing page given how many options are available for customizing.
Perhaps one of the best uses of this tool is to create a call to action button from the sidebar.
6. Text Slider
Image sliders are a great way to give the website an active flow. Text Slider provides that same ability, but with text instead of graphics. The layout is responsive which means it will work in a mobile environment.
Users can customize the typography of the plugin such as changing colors, font types and transition effects.
This plugin is a relatively small tool, but it has great potential for reaching an audience. Text Slider comes with a shortcode that allows users to place it anywhere that uses text editing. This includes posts and pages.
There is also a custom CSS panel in the event you want to further alter the effects of the plugin.
7. Black Studio TinyMCE Widget
The Black Studio TinyMCE Widget combines the power of your current WYSIWYG editor with the text widget for sidebars. Essentially, anything you can alter in the content section of the WordPress editor is usable with this plugin.
This tool adds a Visual Editor widget that you can drag and drop in any sidebar element of your theme.
This gives you an incredible amount of flexibility when you want to add elements to sidebars that go beyond simple text. It’s almost like giving you the ability to build a content page directly into the sidebar itself.
Black Studio TinyMCE Widget includes both visual and text editors for functionality.
8. WordPress Button Plugin MaxButtons
We’ve covered MaxButtons before as it’s a very useful plugin when you want to add a button without using shortcodes. I’m including it in this list because of how you can change its typography to engage the user.
MaxButtons allows users to create stylish CSS3 buttons that are both attractive and easy to tap on mobile devices.
Using the color picker and font settings, you can create everything from a call to action to social sharing. It has a wide range of customizable options to give your pages and posts a unique look and feel.
If you purchase the pro version of the plugin, you have access to Google Fonts as well as integrations with a variety of form builders.
9. CSS3 Rotating Words
CSS3 Rotating Words is a fun plugin that adds a little bit of character to your site. By using shortcodes, you can add rotation effects to a certain word within your content to make it spin, flip and change. There are five different animations and you can use a custom font size within the article.
Users can add words to replace the selected content which will display during the rotation.
For example, you can take one word from a sentence and it will change automatically as it rotates. This could have an impact in engagement as the site becomes more active.
10. Image Hover Effects Ultimate
Image Hover Effects creates a layer of interactivity for the website. When someone hovers the mouse over an image, you can display an effect or caption. And with the sheer number of effects, you can easily create something eye-popping for your visitors.
This plugin comes with custom CSS generation, cloning, various font settings, and a variety of overlay effects. One of the highlights is how the tool works perfectly on the most popular of web browsers including Edge, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.
11. Page Title Splitter
Ever created a title that seemed too long and it doesn’t look just right when viewed on the site? Page Title Splitter may be a good tool to use when you need to alter a title for aesthetics. This is a common problem for those marketing to mobile device users.
Page titles are often shifted poorly depending on the screen size of a visitor.
Using the splitter tool, you can tell WordPress where to shift the text to the next line in your titles. This won’t affect SEO or the meta title of the site, but it does provide a better appearance when you want the content to appear justified and less haphazard.
Page Title Splitter also comes with its own CSS style editing tool for customization.
12. Zeno Font Resizer
The Zeno Font Resizer is a plugin that gives visitors the option to change the font on your website according to their needs. This can be helpful if the visitors find the text too small to read.
For instance, those with poor eyesight often need larger fonts to help clarify the content.
In a way, this can also be used as a method to promote further interactivity of your site. One of the biggest design trends includes interaction from visitors other than simply reading content.
This gives people the ability to “control” an aspect of your site without affecting other visitors.
It’s a customized experience as the plugin saves a cookie on a users computer so the experience is the same each time he or she returns.
13. Simple Pull Quote
Ever wanted to accentuate a quote on a particular piece you’ve created? Simple Pull Quote may be something that will interest you. Instead of merely a colored background as many use in WordPress, this plugin creates the quote as a pop-out element complete with a drop shadow.
This plugin adds a shortcode to WordPress that is usable in most areas that accepts text content. It also places a “pullquote” button in both the visual and text editors of WordPress for easy use.
If you want to customize the appearance of the pulled quote further, you can edit the “simplePullQuotes” class in the style.css file of your theme.
14. wp-Typograhy
If you want to beautify symbols and elements in your text, wp-Typography adds control over various elements of content. This is all done outside of CSS coding. For instance, the plugin handles elements like trademarks and math symbols automatically.
The tool also includes CSS hooks for styling components such as ampersands and uppercase words.
The plugin comes with an amazing number of customization options such as control for “smart quotes” and condensing ellipses. By simply typing certain text into the WordPress editor, wp-Typography does the work of turning those elements into typography that is more attractive and easier to understand.
15. Simple Drop Cap
Drop caps are a nice effect whether you’re writing news or fiction. The Simple Drop Cap plugin is a tool you can use to create the aesthetic of making the first letter in a paragraph much larger than the other typography.
In a nutshell, this plugin adds a shortcode that you use to offset any letter within the content.
Because of the way the editing system is built into WordPress, Simple Drop Cap works in almost any area that uses the TinyMCE editor. This includes posts, pages and even the text widget. You can add drop caps in nearly every place where you could normally type regular text.
The best part is that you don’t need to know CSS to get this function to work.
16. Kirki
For those who want absolute control over designing a theme in the WordPress customizer, Kirki is one of the most popular. A large portion of the process is automated, which means you don’t have to spend a lot of time coding. It comes with a wide scope of tools including tool tips to help designers.
One of the primary features in Kirki is the ability to set the default font type including size, weight and height. If you have knowledge in space techniques, you can alter that as well. There are so many options available that it may seem overwhelming.
However, learning the tool may be one of the best ways to create a layout perfect for your business.
First Impressions Are Important
A good first impression is vital for the success of any business or personal website. You want visitors to be impressed with a clean and fresh look. A site that seems more like a hodgepodge of graphic elements, gaudy colors and poor typography will drive a large portion of people away.
Take the time to develop a pleasant layout. It’s better to do it right the first time than to spend hours trying to get those visitors to come back.