In June 2022, the WordPress.org theme team began strongly urging theme authors to switch to locally hosted web fonts, following a German court case that fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted web fonts. For years, theme authors have been queuing Google Fonts from the Google CDN for better performance, but this method exposes visitors' IP addresses.
Leaving aside our considerations regarding the nonsense that is the GDPR and the various technical/legal references on which it is based, it must be said that the currently undefined issue has created problems for everyone, including WordPress.
The theme team has warned that local font hosting guidelines will change immanently, and many theme authors have moved to comply before it becomes a requirement.
A ticket for bundling Google Fonts with legacy WordPress default themes was patched and on track to be included in WordPress 6.1 in November. WordPress contributor Hendrik Luehrsen called for more attention to the ticket, saying it " directly affects WordPress's core audience in Germany ." He reported that users in Germany were still receiving emails threatening fines for using fonts uploaded by Google.
WordPress lead developer Tonya Mork suggested exploring releasing the updated version of each theme separately from WordPress 6.1.
When each theme is ready, drop it into the wp.org theme repository, users can then upgrade to get locally hosted fonts before WP 6.1 is released.
Mork said.
This changed the direction of the ticket, and with more scrutiny, contributors found that patches could take a little more work.
“Creating new theme builds for this specific change might be helpful when they're ready ,” said Stephen Bernhardt. “ Using locally hosted fonts is already recommended, but we need to fix our own themes before we can make it a requirement for others.” He presented a list of issues and potential improvements after reviewing the patches, and contributors are working on a better approach.
WordPress core committer David Baumwald has changed the milestone to 6.2 , as Beta 2 for 6.1 was released yesterday and the ticket still needs final direction and a patch.
“While I understand the problem, it's still sad to see,” Luehrsen said. “This is still a serious problem in Germany (and other GDPR territories), as users with Google Fonts enabled are currently being targeted by people exploiting the law .”
Luehrsen took to Twitter to comment on his disappointment at missing the 6.1 ticket window.
This is why WordPress will likely lose relevance. Real users get hurt here, but they are in GDPR territories and that doesn't seem to matter. Could I have done more? Probably. But it's kind of sad to see how quickly the momentum on that ticket faded. If Squarespace, Wix, and the like start marketing privacy against WordPress, we're screwed in the GDPR countries.
Meanwhile, those using WordPress's default themes can use a plugin like Local Google Fonts or OMGF | GDPR/DSVGO Compliant, Faster Google Fonts to host fonts locally.
Users can also switch to Bunny Fonts , an open-source, privacy-focused web font platform with no tracking or logging and fully GDPR compliant. Bunny Fonts is compatible with the Google Fonts CSS API v1, so it can function as a drop-in replacement. The Replace Google Fonts with Bunny Fonts plugin allows users to easily do this without editing their theme code.
Contributors are working to have fully GDPR-compliant default WordPress themes ready for WordPress 6.2, scheduled for early 2023.
