CKEditor 4.2.2 - allowedContent = true is not working

Question

I guess I've read most of the SO questions and CKEditor documentation about this, but it does not work for me.

It should be plain and simple, in my CKEditor config.js, I have this :

CKEDITOR.editorConfig = function(config) {
    config.allowedContent = true;
};

But the html is still filtered and this piece of code is being stripped :

<p>
<a href="/site/public/press.pdf"><span class="icon-presseFile"></span></a>
<a href="/site/public/pics.zip"><span class="icon-pressePics"></span></a>
</p>

into this :

<p>&nbsp;</p>

The <span> elements are font icons.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT It works if I add some text in the <span> elements (but I don't want tohave to do that)

Answer 1

I found that I had to add it OUTSIDE of the main config function.

This worked:

CKEDITOR.editorConfig = function( config ) {
...
};
CKEDITOR.config.allowedContent = true;

But this didn't:

CKEDITOR.editorConfig = function( config ) {
    config.allowedContent = true;
    ...
};