is this still being developed?

I am maintaining it but honestly nothing has changed in the WP core that affects the plugins functionality. I’ve pondered doing a superficial update just so people see it’s current and works. Another problem I’m battling is WP’s constant release cycle. It seems it’s always major.minor.0, followed less than week by major.minor.patch with 1 or two patches. It takes time just to push these version increments that do nothing but show users it works for the latest version. I do test it with each new release of WP. Now that a whole new year has hit though I probably should push a change :). Thanks!

Update: I just deployed an updated version showing compatibility with 4.1. It also includes a bug fix that some users were experiencing. Thanks!

hey mneil great stuff! i will try the new version later, after using this plugin for the past few days im sort of getting to grips with how to use it, can i ask you a few questions regarding combining js files?

ok i have a very very complex setup with over 50 plugins (and yes i need them all )so as you can imagine finding a way to combine some of these files is essential, now if i just out right combine all of my js obviously things break, so what i have been doing to work out exactly how i should combine some of these files is to completely disable all plugins and do it via trial and error with each plugin active separately and combining js scripts then reactivating all plugins to check if i have broke anything. now this method seems to work great in the most part but im finding that combining them all together in one instance can also cause problems, some files wont combine with others yet will combine together with each other seperately and not cause problems, so would you recommend combining each plugins js files in a different instance rather than together with other plugins js? but doing it this way can lead to lots of seperate combines being loaded when needed and can slow my site down rather than when they are all combined together in the same section.

so what is your rule of thumb for this? what would you recommend?

and another question is would you combine footer scripts separately than header scripts?

oh by the way, the meaning behind me saying my site can slow down doing it this way is meant as in the first initial serving of all the cached files can be slow if i have lots of separate combines, but after that it is fast for the user, but this could have a potential problem for first time visitors, because if my site takes a few seconds longer to load on the home page due to waiting for all the separate combines to be loaded people may think its slow all the time and leave before realizing, hope im making sense to you. im just curious on how you yourself go about using your own plugin when combining js.

50 plugins is a lot :). Honestly, if all the javascript files you have in all the plugins are written well they should not break when they’re all combined. The plugin makes sure that any dependency file is loaded before the file requiring it. But, obviously sometimes plugins will contain JS files that just don’t play well with others.

The way I debug what isn’t working when I do combine them all is to look at the javascript console in the browser and determine which file broke. The console will give you a line number and you can click to view the source. From there you can usually determine which file broke based on what code is executing. Then, I pull that file out from being combined. In a production environment I’d honestly just fix whatever the issue is in the javascript file that’s causing the breakage. But, trying to do that and maintain 50 plugins and update them is probably too much.

Minifying the javascript is a different aspect. Sometimes even decently written javascript will break when minified. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t, but sometimes small syntax mis-uses make it into plugins and they break the minification. When you’re combining them all are you also using the “minify” options? And, what minification method are you using? Closure, or JSMin?

As far as load times they are only slow on the first request for the first visitor. Once those files are cached for 1 user they are cached for all. The rebuild process doesn’t happen for individual users. Instead, the files are combined and stored on the server and served as needed.

Unfortunately there is no silver bullet to your issue. The “trial and error” method is kind of it. Using the console though can save you a lot of “error” so you’ll at least be able to get the “trial” part done sooner!

Hopefully that helps.

Thanks!

yes i know its a lot but its took over a year and a half to find the 50 plugins needed by testing 100s and 100s and 100s for compatibility with each other and get the right combination to work together like they do :).
ive also had one plugin fully customized to fit my needs. This project had a goal of what i needed to do from the outset in terms of functionality.

its been a case of if one plugin had conflicts with another “ditch it” then carry on looking for alternatives, now the good news is these plugins all work so damn good together and are all pretty lightweight considering what my website actually does now, obviously i have had to create alot of custom functions for alot of the plugins etc and modify things alot to get them to all do exactly what i needed, but im happy with the results so im now at the stage of speed speed speed tweaking, so as you can imagine the js combining is quite a task at the minute to get exactly right with all 50 plugins.

and thankyou very much for getting back to me its much appreciated and i will get around to leaving a review for you shortly ??