I’ve made a significant change to the site by removing the Font Awesome personal kit script tag and switching to using inline CSS for Font Awesome 4. This change has noticeably increased the site’s speed.

Previously, I relied on the Font Awesome personal kit script, which loaded all free icons, most of which I never used. This was unnecessary and added extra load to the site. By switching to inline CSS for Font Awesome 4, I’ve managed to streamline the loading process.

The downside of this change is that I can no longer use Font Awesome 6 and 5 icons. I used some brand icons and several icons from versions 5 and 6, but now I’m limited to version 4.

To cope with this limitation, I’ve had to compromise by finding relatable icons within version 4 or using SVGs where necessary. While version 4 still loads a lot of icons I don’t use, it’s a better option than loading the entire kit.

There are other ways to reduce the burden of Font Awesome on the site, such as lazy loading the script using js. Ive also tried Async and Defer tags and don’t make much of a  difference.