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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T05:57:36+00:00

I’m writing a plugin for WordPress developers that allows a dev to include my

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I’m writing a plugin for WordPress developers that allows a dev to include my own widgets in their theme at any point.

The issue is that I can’t control when they’re going to require/use the widget code – which itself might necessitate the inclusion of external js/css files.

I think it’s likely that people will call these widgets often after wp_head() has executed, which means that any js/css inclusions that go with the particular widget they’ve called will get added inline (or, into the footer if i write it that way).

I can’t predict beforehand which widgets they might use to make sure the assets are included at an earlier juncture – and as far as i know, i can’t ensure they end up in the [head] short of altering the output buffer with a preg_replace afterwards.

So my question is really two-fold: If you were using the plugin, would you have a problem with potential assets for widgets (like carousels, etc) being loaded inline or in the footer? (I know non-critical js is often loaded in the footer, but have not seen a convention for doing this with css) And if so, is it worth altering the buffer with a preg_replace in order to fix this issue and ensure the externals end up in the [head]? Or perhaps a 3rd option I haven’t thought of?

The widgets themselves can be custom-made so i can’t guarantee that any scripts that go with them aren’t important enough to need to be loaded first (though it’s unlikely) and i’m slightly concerned that altering the buffer after every page load would be inefficient.

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would make a requirement that your pluggins must be loaded in the template or in the pluggins before wp_head gets called. It is increasingly important to provide well structured code these days so offering a hack through or a way to produce bad code is IMO bad practice.

    Your idea about the replace is nice, it’s not a bad thing at all that could allow late-binding of external scripts, but my suggestion stands. If wordpress requires you to setup your CSS and Plugins and Scripts before the wp-head, why not require it too for your framework…

    Enforcing good standards should never make you lose interest, at least, the real pro community will like it, while the copy/pasters that don’t really understand programming will probably find it frustrating and complex.

    Cheers

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