Question

This should be super simple. The first code block works, but when I wrap it in a function and attempt to call the function, it doesn’t work.

This Works:

$(document).ready(function() {

        $("#groups-image").hide();
        $("#quiz-image").hide();
        $("#members-image").hide();     

});

This Doesn’t Work:

$(document).ready(function() {

        function hideatstart() {

        $("#groups-image").hide();
        $("#quiz-image").hide();
        $("#members-image").hide();     
        }

        hideatstart();
});

UPDATE: After looking at the accepted answer, I was able to get working code. It involved not having any spaces between the lines of code, which would allow p tags to be inserted. Best practice would be to remove the JQuery to a separate script, which I will do. The following code works:

$(document).ready(function() {
    function hideatstart(){
        $("#groups-image").hide();
        $("#quiz-image").hide();
        $("#members-image").hide();
        }
    hideatstart();
});

Answer 1

I inspected the HTML on your live site and found that your snippet is outputted like this:

<div class="art-postcontent">
    <!-- article-content -->
    <!-- [snipped] -->
    <p><script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js"></script><br />
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function() {</p>
<p>         function hideatstart() {</p>
<p>         $("#groups-image").hide();
            $("#quiz-image").hide();
            $("#members-image").hide();     
            }</p>
<p>         hideatstart();
    });
</script></p>
    <!-- [snipped] -->
</div>

As you can see, WordPress’s wpautop filter wrapped your lines inside paragraphs.

If you need to inject a script somewhere, you better do it with a plugin or a theme function and not by pasting the code in a WordPress post or widget. All regular WordPress content types are escaped to prevent such possibly malicious injections. It seems like you’re using a custom art post type, which normally gets a similar treatment. There are ways to prevent the content from being escaped, but you should seriously consider moving your script code somewhere else.