Title: Fontello Query String
Last modified: August 30, 2016

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# Fontello Query String

 *  Anonymous User
 * (@anonymized-14169293)
 * [10 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fontello-query-string/)
 * Would be nice if query strings in fontello URLS were removed.
 * [https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-social-icons/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-social-icons/)

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Plugin Contributor [Nick C](https://wordpress.org/support/users/modernnerd/)
 * (@modernnerd)
 * [10 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fontello-query-string/#post-6347103)
 * Thanks for the request, QROkes!
 * The query strings are used so that the font can be updated with new icons without
   modifying the filename. Even though using query strings can prevent proxy caching,
   most browsers should fetch the font file the first time the page loads, then 
   load it from cache on subsequent page loads.
 * At the moment, the simplest way to disable them would be to edit the file at 
   wp-content/plugins/simple-social-icons/css/style.css and remove the query strings
   directly in that file.
 *  Thread Starter Anonymous User
 * (@anonymized-14169293)
 * [10 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fontello-query-string/#post-6347182)
 * Thanks for your answer, Nick.
    I think is not a good practice use query strings
   because it affect the site performance, as you said before, it prevent to be 
   cacheable, so every time it should be loaded (although is just a small size file).
   It’s not like everyday you add new icons, so it’s not a hard job change the filename.
 *  [Nick](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nickdc/)
 * (@nickdc)
 * [10 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fontello-query-string/#post-6347189)
 * > I think is not a good practice use query strings because it affect the site
   > performance, as you said before, it prevent to be cacheable, so every time 
   > it should be loaded (although is just a small size file).
 * Query strings are still a popular way to version assets, and they don’t normally
   cause major issues.
 * The query strings this plugin uses should not prevent the fontello font from 
   being cached in most cases – the vast majority of browsers will load fontello
   on the first visit, but use a cached copy on subsequent page visits.
 * To test this yourself, you can:
 * 1. Visit a site in Chrome that uses Simple Social Icons, such as [http://www.genesisframework.com/](http://www.genesisframework.com/).
 * 2. Open the Network tab, search for Fontello, then clear your cache and refresh
   the page. You’ll see that the site loads the font the first time with a status
   of 200 and a size of 5.9KB: [http://d.pr/i/qRlG](http://d.pr/i/qRlG)
 * 3. Refresh the page. You’ll see that the resource size now says “from cache” 
   to indicate that the file was served from a local cache and not requested from
   the server this time, despite the query string. [http://d.pr/i/14SqF](http://d.pr/i/14SqF)
 * The only time the query string may cause an issue is if:
 * a. A (typically quite old) proxy server ignores the query string and caches an
   old copy of the font, then serves it instead of the newly updated one.
 * b. You’re using a CDN that’s configured to ignore query strings (not generally
   the default). In this case, you may also end up serving a stale version of the
   font if the CDN isn’t refreshed after a plugin update.
 * If you’re not experiencing either of these issues, the query string should pose
   no problem. If you’re running into those issues and this starts to affect other
   plugin users too, I’d be very happy to pass on your recommendation to switch 
   to file name versioning instead of query string versioning.
 * I hope that explanation proves useful, and many thanks again for the feedback!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Fontello Query String’ is closed to new replies.

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## Tags

 * [fontello](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/fontello/)
 * [query strings](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/query-strings/)

 * 3 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [Nick](https://wordpress.org/support/users/nickdc/)
 * Last activity: [10 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fontello-query-string/#post-6347189)
 * Status: not resolved