One of the most frustrating items I’ve come across recently is that alot of WordPress plugins include their own version of jQuery or similar JavaScript library. Please Stop!!!!

What you may not realize is that WordPress comes bundled with the jQuery library and to boot they provide a simple method to not only include it in your website but to ensure that it only gets included once. Please familiarize yourself with the wp_enqueue_script function as it will make your plugins cleaner and help to mitigate conflicts with other plugins and templates.

To include jQuery, Scriptaculous, or similar libraries is a simple 2 step process.

1. Register a method for the init hook
   This is necessary as the wp_enqueue_script should be called upon the init stage of WordPress execution.

   add_action('init', 'plugin_init');
   

2. Enqueue the jQuery library

   function plugin_init() {
       wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
   }