Dequeue, Unregister, Remove Action - Not Working on Plugin

Question

Several years ago, not really having a handle on the best practice for running a MultiSite network, I often network activated plugins. Later I realized this was a mistake because not all the sites used some of the plugins. So I have unnecessary scripts and stylesheets on several sites.

What I've started doing for those unwanted plugin resources is wp_dequeue_style( 'style-sheet' ); and wp_deregister_style( 'style-sheet' ); in child-theme functions.php

My problem is that it doesn't work for all plugins. For example, https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-recent-posts/ is not following my function. I thought perhaps I would try to remove_action(); but I am not familiar with how this exactly works.

Here's what I'm working with in my functions.php and it works for other style-sheets.

function remove_unwanted_stylesheets() {

wp_dequeue_style( 'wp-advanced-rp-css' );
wp_deregister_style( 'wp-advanced-rp-css' );

}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'remove_unwanted_stylesheets', 999 );

The plugin enqueue and add action is as follows.

function add_advanced_recent_posts_widget_stylesheet() {

    $plugin_dir = 'advanced-recent-posts-widget';

    if ( @file_exists( STYLESHEETPATH . '/advanced-recent-posts-widget.css' ) )

        $mycss_file = get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/advanced-recent-posts-widget.css';

    elseif ( @file_exists( TEMPLATEPATH . '/advanced-recent-posts-widget.css' ) )

        $mycss_file = get_template_directory_uri() . '/advanced-recent-posts-widget.css';

    else

        $mycss_file = plugins_url( 'css/advanced-recent-posts-widget.css',dirname(__FILE__) );





        wp_register_style( 'wp-advanced-rp-css', $mycss_file );

        wp_enqueue_style( 'wp-advanced-rp-css' );



}

add_action('wp_print_styles', 'add_advanced_recent_posts_widget_stylesheet');

Any insight into how I can effectively dequeue and unregister the stylesheet for this plugin is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Going off of the plugins source code I simply copied then changed the add_action(); to remove_action(); in my child-themes function.php

add_action('wp_print_styles', 'add_advanced_recent_posts_widget_stylesheet');

Replace add with remove.

remove_action('wp_print_styles','add_advanced_recent_posts_widget_stylesheet');

So simple. Now I know.

Answer 2

Your issue is timing. If you check out this answer for detailed order you'll see that wp_print_styles occurs after wp_enqueue_scripts. So the earliest your dequeue would work in this case is wp_print_styles at 11 priority.

Really it's unconventional of that plugin's author to register at that point. wp_enqueue_scripts is intended hooks for that exactly so that others don't have troubles like this.