Alas! I figured it out! In case anyone else has this problem (which seems unlikely), I’m posting the solution.
Turns out that the problem was how I had enqueued my scripts. Being a newbie, I didn’t set up my functions file properly. I discovered this when working through some other issues later. After finally getting that sorted out yesterday, today I remembered the problems I had with the js libraries for this plugin. I just tested them out and all is well now. Yay!
Here’s the magical code:
<?php
function my_mootools() {
if (is_page('home')) {
wp_register_script('mootools', '/wp-content/themes/my-theme-name/js/mootools-1.2-core.js', false, '1.2.0');
wp_enqueue_script('mootools');
wp_deregister_script('jquery');
wp_register_script('jquery', 'https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js', array('mootools'));
}
}
add_action('wp_print_scripts', 'my_mootools');
?>
<?php
function my_jquery_not_home() {
if (!is_page('home')) {
wp_deregister_script('jquery');
wp_register_script('jquery', 'https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js');
}
}
add_action('wp_print_scripts', 'my_jquery_not_home');
?>
I was only using the mootools for a something specific on the home page (probly a frivolous use of a separate library, i know. but i really couldn’t get what i needed from any jquery plugins). At any rate, there are now 2 php functions above, the first is to enqueue both the mootools and jquery on the home page only. The key to making the js libraries for this plugin work lies in that first function. By setting the array on jquery to ‘mootools’, mootools now loads first. Fancy that! It’s in the codex, but somehow, I never paid it attention. Now everything is great!
Sidepoint: In case you were wondering, the 2nd function is to set jquery for every other page besides home. I had tried making the jquery line separate from the ‘my-mootools’ function, with the array to load mootools 1st. Unfortunately, the array also means jquery will not load at all unless mootools loads. Since I was only loading it on the home page, the rest of the site was losing jquery. By setting 2 functions, 1 for home and 1 for not home, I get to separate mootools from the rest of the site w/o losing jquery (so every page of my site no longer has to load a heavy js library that isn’t being used, speeding things up a bit).
Hope this helps someone save a lot of time one day ??