How can I remove jquery from the frontside of my WordPress?

Question

My wordpress site is a bit heavy to download. On the frontend, its including jquery unnecessarily. In my firebug it looks like:

jquery.js?ver=1.3.2


        

Answer 1

JQuery may be being added by your theme. If your theme is adding it properly, it should be using the wp_enqueue_script() function. To remove JQuery, simply use the wp_deregister_script() function.

wp_deregister_script('jquery');

Removing JQuery for your whole site might cause some unintended consequences for your admin section. To avoid removing JQuery on your admin pages, use this code instead:

if ( !is_admin() ) wp_deregister_script('jquery');

Now only pages that are not admin pages will run the wp_deregister_script() function.

Add this code to the functions.php file in your theme directory.

Answer 2

jQuery.js is just 15KB if you're using the minified version, and these would be totally absent if you were using a theme that doesn't require it.

You should probably look for a lightweight theme without jQuery instead of hacking it and then seeing the theme break in several places because they're looking for those js files.

Answer 3

Look in the source of your rendered page; Wordpress often includes jQuery by default when <?php wp_head(); ?> is called in header.php, so you may stil see jQuery included in your site.

If you remove <?php wp_head(); ?> in header.php, you might loose other plugin functionality, as many plugins "hook" into Wordpress at that point.

But including jQuery isn't that big of a deal. It's small and Wordpress depends on it for some things.

Answer 4

All the other solutions are now out of date as of wordpress 3.6

add_filter( 'wp_default_scripts', 'change_default_jquery' );

function change_default_jquery( &$scripts){
    if(!is_admin()){
        $scripts->remove( 'jquery');
        $scripts->add( 'jquery', false, array( 'jquery-core' ), '1.10.2' );
    }
}