[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #44097: Introduce cookie consent & management to core

[WordPress Trac]

#44097: Introduce cookie consent & management to core
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 Reporter:  danieliser   |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General      |    Version:
 Severity:  major        |   Keywords:
  Focuses:               |
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 Cookie consent is going to be one of the biggest hurdles for most sites.
 There are more than a dozen plugins attempting to do this in various ways,
 but I think that is inevitably going to be a nightmare.

 Consider it from both site owner and plugin developer perspectives:

 Site owner:

 Plugin A support Cookie consent plugin 1
 Plugin B support Cookie consent plugin 2

 Do I install both cookie consents, or uninstall one of my needed plugins
 and maybe find a replacement that also uses consent plugin 1?


 ----


 Plugin developer:

 Do I really need to build and maintain long term support for dozens of 3rd
 party cookie consent plugins. There won't be time for anything else.


 ----


 I propose this needs to be core functionality, a centralized point of
 registering cookies in a dynamic way under several predefined categories.

 Any other way leads to major issues for the entire ecosystem.

 There are several general categories:
 Necessary
 Preferences
 Statistics
 Marketing

 Other could be a possible one as well.

 Each plugin can then dynamically define cookie name, label & description
 for each cookie which could look something like this (adapted from
 #44010):

 {{{#!php
 <?php
 add_filter( 'wp_consent_cookie_list', function ( $cookies = array() {
     $cookies['cookie_name'] = [
         'category' => 'necessary',
         'group'    => __( 'Plugin Name' ), // Allows for logical grouping
 within each category
         'label'    => __( 'Cookie Label' ),
         'reason'   => __( 'Used for reason x, y & z' ),
     ];

     return $cookies;
 });
 }}}

 Alternatively, it could be done via a register_cookie_for_consent()
 function but I think a filter is most versatile.


 ----

 Next would come a front end consent overlay on first visit, maybe a method
 of reopening this modal in the future to manage them again as well.

 It should likely show each category and a way to enable disable by
 category as a whole or on per cookie basis to some extent as required by
 law.

 ----

 Last part that needs to be there is a way to test if consent for a
 particular cookie has been granted or denied. This is paramount as plugins
 such as analytics need to check for consent prior to loading the analytics
 js which will track the user.

 I don't pretend to have all this worked out but I will be happy to
 contribute as much time as needed to get something to this effect in place
 as it ultimately saves me and my users thousands of collective hours in
 fixing compatibility with many different consent plugins.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/44097>
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