Why is @font-face throwing a 404 error on woff files?

I'm using @font-face on my company's site and it works/looks great. Except Firefox and Chrome will throw a 404 error on the .woff file. IE does not throw the error. I have the fonts located at the root but I've tried with the fonts in the css folder and even giving the entire url for the font. If remove those fonts from my css file I don't get a 404 so I know it's not a syntax error.

Also, I used fontsquirrels tool to create the @font-face fonts and code:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'LaurenCBrownRegular';
  src: url('/laurencb-webfont.eot');
  src: local('☺'), 
    url('/laurencb-webfont.woff') format('woff'), 
    url('/laurencb-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'), 
    url('/laurencb-webfont.svg#webfontaaFhOfws') format('svg');
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
  font-family: 'FontinSansRegular';
  src: url('/fontin_sans_r_45b-webfont.eot');
  src: local('☺'), 
    url('/fontin_sans_r_45b-webfont.woff') format('woff'), 
    url('/fontin_sans_r_45b-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'), 
    url('/fontin_sans_r_45b-webfont.svg#webfontKJHTwWCi') format('svg');
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

I was experiencing this same symptom - 404 on woff files in Chrome - and was running an application on a Windows Server with IIS 6.

If you are in the same situation you can fix it by doing the following:

Solution 1

"Simply add the following MIME type declarations via IIS Manager (HTTP Headers tab of website properties): .woff application/x-woff"

Update: according to MIME Types for woff fonts and Grsmto the actual MIME type is application/x-font-woff (for Chrome at least). x-woff will fix Chrome 404s, x-font-woff will fix Chrome warnings.

As of 2017: Woff fonts have now been standardised as part of the RFC8081 specification to the mime type font/woff and font/woff2.

Thanks to Seb Duggan: http://sebduggan.com/posts/serving-web-fonts-from-iis

Solution 2

You can also add the MIME types in the web config:

  <system.webServer>
    <staticContent>
      <remove fileExtension=".woff" /> <!-- In case IIS already has this mime type -->
      <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff" mimeType="font/woff" />
    </staticContent>    
  </system.webServer>

The answer to this post was very helpful and a big time saver. However, I found that when using FontAwesome 4.50, I had to add an additional configuration for woff2 type of extension also as shown below else requests for woff2 type was giving a 404 error in Chrome's Developer Tools under Console> Errors.

According to the comment by S.Serp, the below configuration should be put within <system.webServer> tag.

<staticContent>
  <remove fileExtension=".woff" />
  <!-- In case IIS already has this mime type -->
  <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff" mimeType="application/x-font-woff" />
  <remove fileExtension=".woff2" />
  <!-- In case IIS already has this mime type -->
  <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff2" mimeType="application/x-font-woff2" />
</staticContent>

Actually the @Ian Robinson answer works well but Chrome will continue complain with that message : "Resource interpreted as Font but transferred with MIME type application/x-woff"

If you get that, you can change from

> application/x-woff

to

> application/x-font-woff

and you will not have any Chrome console errors anymore !

(tested on Chrome 17)

Solution for IIS7

I also came across the same issue. I think doing this configuration from the server level would be better since it applies for all the websites.

1. Go to IIS root node and double-click the "MIME Types" configuration option

2. Click "Add" link in the Actions panel on the top right.

3. This will bring up a dialog. Add .woff file extension and specify "application/x-font-woff" as the corresponding MIME type.

Add MIME Type for .woff file name extension

Here is what I did to solve the issue in IIS 7

In addition to Ian's answer, I had to allow the font extensions in the request filtering module to make it work.

<system.webServer>
  <staticContent>
    <remove fileExtension=".woff" />
    <remove fileExtension=".woff2" />
    <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff" mimeType="application/x-font-woff" />
    <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff2" mimeType="application/x-font-woff" />
  </staticContent>
  <security>
      <requestFiltering>
          <fileExtensions>
              <add fileExtension=".woff" allowed="true" />
              <add fileExtension=".ttf" allowed="true" />
              <add fileExtension=".woff2" allowed="true" />
          </fileExtensions>
      </requestFiltering>
  </security>    
</system.webServer>

Run IIS Server Manager (run command : inetmgr) Open Mime Types and add following

> File name extension: .woff > > MIME type: application/octet-stream

I tried a ton of things around permissions, mime types, etc, but for me it ended up being that the web.config had removed the Static file handler in IIS, and then explicitly added it back in for directories that would have static files. As soon as I added a location node for my directory and added the handler back, the requests stopped getting 404s.

If you are using CodeIgniter under IIS7 :

In your web.config file, add woff to the pattern

<rule name="Rewrite CI Index">
  <match url=".*" />
    <conditions>
      <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" pattern="css|js|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|htm|html|woff" negate="true" />
    </conditions>
    <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php/{R:0}" />
 </rule>

Hope it helps !

This might be obvious, but it has tripped me up with 404s a number of times... Make sure the fonts folder permissions are set correctly.

Also check your URL rewriter. It may throw 404 if something "weird" was found.

If you dont have access to your webserver config, you can also just RENAME the font file so that it ends in svg (but retain the format). Works fine for me in Chrome and Firefox.

If still not works after adding MIME types, please check whether "Anonymous Authentication" is enable in Authentication section in the site and make sure to select "Application pool identity" as per the given screen shot.

Solved it:

I had to use Mo'Bulletproofer method

IIS Mime Type: .woff font/x-woff (not application/x-woff, or application/x-font-woff)