Development

Do you want to learn how to properly add JavaScripts and CSS stylesheets in WordPress? Many DIY users often make the mistake of directly calling their scripts and stylesheets in plugins and themes. In this article, we will show you how to properly add JavaScripts and stylesheet in WordPress. This will be particularly useful for those who are just starting to learn WordPress theme and plugin development.

Often times, adding custom JavaScript for analytics tracking is the first type of custom code a WordPress user has to implement. Normally the documentation that you are given with these codes are written as if your site is just a bunch of HTML files. But that’s not how WordPress works. The HTML of your site is dynamically generated.

When you’re optimizing your website, you’ve probably noticed a page speed score telling you to remove query strings from your CSS and JavaScript files in WordPress. Query strings are URLs that have either ? or &.

But why do these appear in the URLs and what’s the cause? Actually query strings are used by plugin developers to push updates.

The static resources (like CSS and JS files) are usually cached by proxy servers or CDNs. And when a developer has to push an update, it won’t be rendered immediately because of the caching effects. Which is why they use query strings to instantly render updates, as query strings won’t be cached. But as a side effect, since they are not cached, they contribute to the loading time of a web page.