Wordpress 5.1 upgrade has lost the parent theme JavaScript

Question

I have just upgraded from Wordpress 4.9 to 5.1, which obviously comes with Gutenberg.

One major problem I have is that the parent theme (BeTheme) JavaScript is not being loaded and instead the child theme JavaScript is being loaded for a second time.

After the point where wp_footer() is called I have this:

<script type='text/javascript' src='https://crmpicco.localhost/wp-content/themes/betheme/assets/animations/animations.min.js?ver=21.1.1.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://crmpicco.localhost/wp-content/themes/betheme/assets/jplayer/jplayer.min.js?ver=21.1.1.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://crmpicco.localhost/wp-content/themes/betheme/js/parallax/translate3d.js?ver=21.1.1.1'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://crmpicco.localhost/wp-content/themes/crmpiccodotcom/js/scripts.js?ver=21.1.1.1'></script>

Whereas on my old installation the last line would be pointing to the parent theme JavaScript.

What has caused this to change in 5.1?

Answer 1

I traced this back to the name of the scripts.js JavaScript file.

My parent theme (BeTheme) enqueues the main scripts.js like this:

wp_enqueue_script('mfn-scripts', get_theme_file_uri('/js/scripts.js'), array('jquery'), MFN_THEME_VERSION, true);

In my child theme crmpiccodotcom/footer.php I enqueue the scripts.js like this:

// include the crmpiccodotcom child theme JavaScript
add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'crmpiccodotcom_enqueue_scripts');
function crmpiccodotcom_enqueue_scripts() {
    wp_enqueue_script(
        'custom-script',
        CHILD_THEME_URI. '/js/scripts.js',
        array('jquery')
    );
}

Seemingly the name caused a clash and the BeTheme used the child theme's scripts.js instead of it's own, so the fix was to rename the child theme scripts.js -> crmpicco-scripts.js

I believe the issue lies with the BeTheme, which I will take up with them, but certainly a file rename resolves this.