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

If you autoload url helper also and place the code below in header http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/get-started/

Code:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="//maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.3.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">

There's only one rule - please don't tell anyone to go and read the manual.  Sometimes the manual just SUCKS!