Building WordPress Websites That Better Respect User Privacy

In recent years, privacy has become one of the most important topics in our society. With the rise of services that use and sell user data, serious discussions have been taking place regarding best practices and the rights of users.

In some cases, they’ve led to government-based regulations such as the EU’s GDPR. However, worldwide there still seems to be quite a lot of confusion, which tends to result in inaction. Unfortunately, web designers seem to be caught in the middle.

What makes things even more difficult is how much we rely on third-party providers that enable all manner of different functionality. Each provider is another link in a privacy chain that may or may not be collecting/using data in an undesirable way.

Nowhere is this more of a challenge than when it comes to building sites with WordPress. That’s not because the CMS doesn’t take privacy seriously – it does. Rather, it’s a combination of being the web’s most-used platform and its ability to tie in with an untold number of services via plugins and themes.

That begs the question: How do we build WordPress websites with privacy in mind?