Use Google Libraries: A Plugin to Improve Script Loading Performance in WordPress

Download & Installation

The documentation and download are available on the Use Google Libraries page in the WordPress plugin directory.

The Basics

A number of the javascript libraries distributed with WordPress are also hosted on Google’s AJAX Libraries API. This plugin allows your WordPress site to use the content distribution network side of Google’s AJAX Library API, rather than serving these files from your WordPress install directly.

This provides numerous potential performance benefits:

increases the chance that a user already has these files cached
takes load off your server
uses compressed versions of the libraries (where available)
Google’s servers are set up to negotiate HTTP compression with the requesting browser

Supported Libraries and Components

Try it out, and please rate it. If you have any problems or suggestions leave a comment.

13 Responses to “Use Google Libraries: A Plugin to Improve Script Loading Performance in WordPress”

John Blackbourn Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Hi Jason,

Nice work on this plugin. I never got round to updating my plugin to handle the various sub-libraries, and now you’ve done the hard work for me :) I’ll point everyone to your plugin in the future.

Regards,
John.
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Jason Penney Says:
November 28th, 2008 at 11:00 am
@John Blackbourn - Thanks for the kind words (and for releasing your plugin under the GPL)!
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malcalevak Says:
January 4th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Jason,
I was thinking to myself the other day if this would be possible, luckily before I tried writing it myself I did a search and saw it’d already been done.
Unfortunately I can’t seem to get it to work and I’m not sure why. I cleared out my cache and refreshed the page just to make sure, but every time it’s pulling from the WordPress directory and not Google. I even switched off the K2 “theme” just to make sure that wasn’t causing a conflict.
I’m using WP 2.7.

Any ideas?

Thanks.
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Jason Penney Says:
January 7th, 2009 at 10:33 am
@malcalevak - Sorry for the delay in reply. I can’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t be working for you. Are you using wp-cache or wp-super-cache? You didn’t leave a link so I can’t check which of the supported libraries are being loaded on your site, but I’d be glad to help you figure it out.
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malcalevak Says:
January 8th, 2009 at 9:11 am
@Jason Penney - Jason, Thanks for getting back to me. I thought I’d left a link, but it seems I was mistaken. I’ve attached one now.
I’ve attempted to use wp-cache and wp-super-cache, but wasn’t actually able to get them to work right, so I turned them off, and they were not on when I actually reported the problem.
Would it be possible that the K2 theme (which uses jQuery) is somehow overriding what’s being done by the plugin? (This seems doubtful, but worth mentioning).
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WordPress Plugin Releases for 11/27 | bloground.ro - Blogging resources, WordPress themes and plugins for your development Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 9:10 am
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November 27th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
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November 27th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
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WordPress Plugin Releases for 11/28 | hieudt's blog Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
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WordPress Plugin Releases for 11/27 » All About Technologies Says:
November 28th, 2008 at 12:59 am
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Quasi.dot Says:
November 28th, 2008 at 5:02 am
[...] Use Google Libraries: A Plugin to Improve Script Loading Performance in WordPress | All the Billion … Supported Libraries and Components [...]
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WordPress Plugin Releases for 11/27 Says:
November 29th, 2008 at 12:45 am
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WordPress Plugin Updates for 11/27 | Zack Live Says:
November 30th, 2008 at 5:27 am
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