WordPress Core Team Proposes Adding WP Consent API to WordPress Core

The WordPress Core team is gathering consensus around integrating the WP Consent API into Core. The WP Consent API feature plugin was originally introduced in early 2020 to standardize the communication of accepted consent categories between plugins.

Automattician Brian Alexander has placed two options before the community: add this feature to Core or make it canonical. In case of adding it to the Core, the existing API must be updated to meet the current Core merge expectations and the Core could introduce a default cookie “popup” or block that could be activated similar to the built-in Privacy Policy feature.

Since the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into effect in March 2024, the WP Consent API plugin has seen a sharp rise in adoption, surpassing 100,000 active installations.

Back in December 2020, the feature was removed from the active features list during a cleanup and marked as “Closed.” However, discussions in the #core-privacy channel in the months that followed overlooked this status change, causing confusion when efforts were made to transfer the plugin to the WordPress GitHub org.

Rogier Lankhorst, the original developer, explained, “The most important aspect of the WP Consent API is its ability to bypass legal discussions entirely and delegate all such matters to CMPs. The WP Consent API should really be JUST an API, and not have any opinion about legal matters. While consent per service is not yet possible, one of the items on the WP Consent API roadmap is an extension that would enable this functionality. The current basic structure is easily extensible to accommodate this feature.”

He also shared, “Extending the consent API to a cmp will most likely result in a project that will never finish, as it will result in endless discussions on legal details. The idea behind this proposal is that we sidestep these discussions and leave them with the vendors/services and cmp’s.”

WordPress users can share their feedback on the proposal in the comments section of the announcement. Most comments so far favor integrating the feature into Core.