Making fonts awesome work ?

I've been struggling with fa fa icons not showing up. Then I found this solution on SO and it worked:

That's in config.php, I used to have $config['base_url'] = 'http://www.mysite.ca' Then I changed it to:

Code:

$root=(isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) ? "https://" : "http://").$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$root.= str_replace(basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), '', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']);
$config['base_url'] = $root;

Is this a standard way to make fonts awesome work or there is a simpler way? And why it worked when I changed it?

CI 2.2.2

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.