jQuery not working in Wordpress

Question

I am using a test environment to try to get jquery working in wordpress, the installation version is 3.2.1 and the theme is 2010 (although I have tried this in a few different themes, same result). There are no plug-ins installed.

Basically I am putting this in the header file to see if I can get jQuery to work.

<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function(){
alert('test');
    });
</script>

have also tried this

jQuery(document).ready(function($){

and this

$j=jQuery.noConflict(); 
// Use jQuery via $j(...)
$j(document).ready(function(){
  alert('test');
});

I can not seem to get it to display the alert when the page loads. When I check firebug the script has loaded.

jQuery works fine when not used in conjunction with WP and all scripts tested outside of WP perform as expected.

Should it work in WP 3.2.1? What can I try?

Answer 1

Have you added the actual jQuery script file?

There are a number of ways to do this, but I usually use the following method by including this code in the functions.php file.

<?php
    function add_jquery() {
       wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery' );
    }    

    add_action('init', 'add_jquery');
?>

Here is also a good resource for more jQuery + Wordpress usage: http://www.ericmmartin.com/5-tips-for-using-jquery-with-wordpress/