Test fonts

Test fonts are trial versions of your fonts that customers can download for free after leaving their name and email. Fontdue generates them automatically by subsetting each font in your catalog – trimming it down to a character set you configure – then suffixing the family name (typically with Test) and packaging the whole set into a single ZIP archive available for download from your site.

Because test fonts are real, installable font files, a customer can set type with them in their own design tools and judge the outlines, spacing, and whichever OpenType features you keep – what a screenshot or on-page type tester can’t show. The trimmed character set is what keeps them impractical for shipping production work. The suffix keeps them clearly labeled in a font manager alongside any licensed copies the customer goes on to buy.

Configuring test fonts

Go to Settings → Test fonts to set how test fonts are built:

• Subsetter unicode ranges – which characters to include, as hex Unicode ranges separated by spaces or commas. * keeps every character; leaving it blank disables test fonts entirely. A typical basic-Latin set is 0041-005a 0061-007a 0030-0039 0020 002c-002e (uppercase, lowercase, numerals, space, comma, hyphen, full stop).
• Subsetter features – which OpenType layout features to preserve. Blank keeps only kern; * keeps everything. Narrowing this list is how you decide whether test fonts expose stylistic sets, fractions, small caps, and so on.
• Family name suffix – the word appended to each family’s name in the font’s name table. Defaults to Test. Applied to every name-table record Fontdue rewrites¹¹Including the PostScript name, which is sanitized to strip characters PostScript doesn’t allow. So Example with suffix Test becomes family name Example Test and PostScript name ExampleTest..
• Font types – which file formats the archive includes. OTF and TTF by default; WOFF and WOFF2 are available too. All four are converted from the original source as needed.
• Include .notdef glyph – off by default. When on, the font’s own .notdef outline is preserved in the subset, so missing characters render with whatever shape you drew for .notdef rather than a blank.
• Included font families – which families the archive covers. All fonts, the default, includes the whole catalog. Manually selected lets you pick specific families. Limited to a tag includes every family carrying a tag you choose – handy if you already tag releases and want trials to follow a tag like retail without maintaining a separate list.²²The Limited to a tag option only appears once at least one font collection has a tag. Within a superfamily, a child family counts as tagged when either it or its superfamily parent carries the tag.

How test fonts are generated

Saving the settings kicks off a background job that builds the ZIP: each selected family is subsetted, suffixed, converted to the requested formats, and arranged under a Fonts/{Family}/{Format}/ tree. Any test licenses get bundled alongside. While the job runs, the Settings → Test fonts page shows a Preparing status³³Rebuilds swap the old archive for the new one atomically – the previously built archive stays downloadable until the new one finishes, so customers never see a Test fonts are currently unavailable message during a rebuild. They only see that message before the very first build completes, when no archive exists yet..

The archive is rebuilt automatically whenever it could have gone out of date:

• You save changes to the test fonts settings.
• You add, edit, or remove a Test license.
• You add, edit, or remove a font collection.

Large catalogs take a few minutes to rebuild. If you want to force a rebuild without making any real changes, open Settings → Test fonts and hit Save – saving always kicks off a fresh build.

Giving customers a download link

If you’re using Fontdue’s demo template, test fonts are served at /test-fonts automatically. Add a link to your navigation by creating a Page with the slug test-fonts.

If you’re building your own site, drop the Test Fonts Form component anywhere on a page. The form collects name, email, and the usual EULA and newsletter checkboxes. The labels for those checkboxes are the same ones that appear in checkout, configured at Settings → Cart & checkout.

If you’re worried about form spam, turn on reCAPTCHA at Settings → Integration → Enable reCAPTCHA – it covers the test fonts form and any newsletter signup components on your site.

Adding a Test EULA

To include a license document with the archive, create a license at Catalog → Licenses and set its License type to Test. Each test license is written into the ZIP root – as LICENSE.html if it’s a text license, or as its PDF if you uploaded one. Test licenses don’t appear in checkout – only retail licenses do – so a test license’s sole job is riding along with test fonts.

Tracking downloads

The admin sidebar has a Test fonts downloads page listing every time a customer has downloaded the archive, with their name, email, and timestamp. It’s searchable by name or email.

The Customers page also picks up this signal while test fonts are enabled: each row shows a Test fonts checkmark when the customer has ever downloaded the archive, and the Test fonts filter narrows the list to Downloaded or Not downloaded.