Problem
There is no reason in the world to give Google the IP addresses of each of our visitors just to serve cute fonts.
Solution
For privacy reasons we setup a Google Font reverse proxy cache with Apache's mod_cache.
This is a drop-in replacement of Google Font. For example you can update right now your URLs from fonts.googleapis.com to google-font-proxy.reyboz.it.
See it in action:
- https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans%3Aregular%2C700|Khand%3A500&subset=latin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext
- https://google-font-proxy.reyboz.it/css?family=Open+Sans%3Aregular%2C700|Khand%3A500&subset=latin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext%2Clatin-ext
The nice part is that after the first request, fonts are then literally stored locally. We can do this because most of Google Fonts are under a Free license.
NOTE: Yes, different user agents should trigger different fonts. If this does not happen, feel free to file a Task.
WARNING: If you noticed a problem in the licenses, file a Task. There shouldn't be any because we use Free fonts.
VirtualHost
apt install apache2 a2enmod cache
/etc/apache2/sites-available/reyboz.google-font-proxy.conf
# # See https://gitpull.it/T776 # <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName google-font-proxy.reyboz.it Include /etc/apache2/my-includes/google-font-proxy.conf </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:443> ServerName google-font-proxy.reyboz.it SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/google-font-proxy.reyboz.it/cert.pem SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/google-font-proxy.reyboz.it/privkey.pem SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/google-font-proxy.reyboz.it/chain.pem Include /etc/apache2/my-includes/google-font-proxy.conf Include /etc/apache2/my-includes/ssl-hardening.conf </VirtualHost>
/etc/apache2/my-includes/google-font-proxy.conf
DocumentRoot /home/www-data/reyboz.it/google-font-proxy/www
# allow to proxy via https://
SSLProxyEngine On
# fix mod_cache for proxies
CacheQuickHandler off
# disable unuseful features
<Location />
AllowOverride none
</Location>
# forward uncached request to Google Fonts
<Location /css>
# append the value "User-Agent" to the Vary HTTP header
# but only if the dont-vary environment is not set.
# don't know why we have to check the dont-vary env
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
ProxyPass https://fonts.googleapis.com/css
ProxyPassReverse https://fonts.googleapis.com/css
CacheEnable disk
</Location>
# store same cache from different hostnames
CacheKeyBaseURL "http://google-font-proxy.reyboz.it/"
# cache even with Cache-Control: private
CacheStorePrivate On
CacheIgnoreNoLastMod On
CacheIgnoreCacheControl On
# add X-Cache with HIT|REVALIDATE|MISS for debug purposes
CacheHeader on
# use the default
#CacheRoot /var/cache/apache2/mod_cache_disk
#LogLevel debug
#CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/cached-requests.log" common env=cache-hit
#CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/uncached-requests.log" common env=cache-miss
#CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/revalidated-requests.log" common env=cache-revalidate
#CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/invalidated-requests.log" common env=cache-invalidate
#LogFormat "%{cache-status}e " cachelog
#CustomLog /var/log/apache2/cachelog.log cachelogLet's Encrypt
$ certbot certonly --webroot --webroot-path=/var/www/html -d google-font-proxy.reyboz.it Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log Plugins selected: Authenticator webroot, Installer None Obtaining a new certificate Performing the following challenges: http-01 challenge for google-font-proxy.reyboz.it Using the webroot path /var/www/html for all unmatched domains. Waiting for verification... Cleaning up challenges IMPORTANT NOTES: - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/google-font-proxy.reyboz.it/fullchain.pem Your key file has been saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/google-font-proxy.reyboz.it/privkey.pem Your cert will expire on 2021-06-29. To obtain a new or tweaked version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again. To non-interactively renew *all* of your certificates, run "certbot renew" - If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by: Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/donate Donating to EFF: https://eff.org/donate-le
Cache directory
Already created by Debian here:
/var/cache/apache2/mod_cache_disk
Systemd service
This service is needed for a general cleanup of the cache directory to keep it at a maximum size.
It was already provided by Debian:
systemctl enable --now apache-htcacheclean