WordPress Theme Authors Are Moving to Host Fonts Locally
The WordPress Themes team is poised to change its guidelines on remote hosting Google Fonts and is once again strongly urging theme authors to host their fonts locally. Yoast-sponsored contributor Ari Stathopoulos published an update today to answer some questions the team has been receiving about fonts in themes: Historically, WordPress themes hosted in the w.org themes repository were not allowed to use third-party resources. This included images, javascript files, CSS files, webfonts, and other assets loaded from a remote server.Google fonts was an exception to this rule because, at the time, there was no reliable way to implement locally-hosted webfonts, and typography is an integral part of a theme’s design.Google fonts, however, can no longer be considered an exception to this guideline because of the GDPR and privacy implications. The team is responding to a recent German court case, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted webfonts. This case spurred a few other threats against website owners and many questions for the Themes team. What was previously a strong recommendation from WordPress.org is now a warning that guidelines will be changing imminently. “A theme should not be allowed to use external resources,” Stathopoulos said. “The guidelines right now allow for remote…
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