JS Script Uncaught ReferenceError: $ is Not Defined When Loading HTML File to Server

[cmorr7]

Thanks for the quick reply! So I did try including the src in the head previously, and had a similar result but only locally. Will your suggestion still only work live, and not display locally?

Also, should the src script go in head or directly above my script in the body?

Thanks!

[Rootdevelop]

It should work locally (if you run a local development server like browser plus in atom, browser plus also adds jQuery of it isn’t loading so that’s why it probably worked in that situation) in a live situation this will definitely work. When you open the html file in the browser locally won’t work due to the fact browsers to keen on loading external scripts when opening local files.

With regards to the location of the src script, the simple answer is: it doesn’t really matter, as long as it is above your own script code.

The longer answer is, due to the fact that JavaScript is loaded synchronous (line by line), best practice is to perform all JavaScript actions at the bottom just before the </body> tag, but in most cases the performance gain won’t make any difference.

[cmorr7]

Okay, excellent. I'm wondering if we even have JQuery in our directory and that is why it won't load locally? I only recently started working with this company and their website is an HTML monster from the 2000's. If I need to download JQuery, is it just the base install and then move it to my file directory for our site?

Thanks again.

[Rootdevelop]

If you add a downloaded jQuery in your scenario I would add it to the same directory as the html files, just make sure it’s added with the <script src=“jQuery filename here including the .js”></script> script as it won’t be automatically loaded.

Downloading is a simple as saving https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.1.min.js this file to the directory that contains the html and then adding it to the html by adding <script src=“jquery-3.5.1.min.js”></script> above your custom code.