see: http://codex.simple-press.com/codex/faq/troubleshooting/what-is-this-jquery-conflict/

If I had to guess, I would say its this:

<script type=’text/javascript’ src=’http://www.ogaugehobbyist.com/wp/wp-content/themes/wp-clear313/admin/jquery-ui-personalized-1.5.2.packed.js?ver=3.4.2′></script>

loading an old version of jquery ui…  so see if you can find where in the theme it loads that…  and we can see if we can work around it…

It’s called in a file called “theme-js.php”:

if ( is_active_widget( false, false, 'sidetabs-widget' ) || is_pagetemplate_active("page-tabbed-archive.php") || is_pagetemplate_active("page-tabbed-cat.php") ) {
    wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
    wp_enqueue_script('jquery-ui-per', get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/admin/jquery-ui-personalized-1.5.2.packed.js', array('jquery'));
    wp_enqueue_script( 'sprinkle-tabs', get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/admin/sprinkle-tabs.js', array('jquery') );
}

first step, lets try changing this line

wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery-ui-per’, get_bloginfo(‘template_directory’).’/admin/jquery-ui-personalized-1.5.2.packed.js’, array(‘jquery’));

to

wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery-ui-core’); wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery-ui-widget’);

then check the forum page and your other wp pages… even if it makes the forum work, it may break other stuff in his theme…

are you even using the sidetabs widget? if so, which I think you must for it to get loaded, are they in use on the forum page?

I have it working now by loading the Simple::Press scripts in the footer, but I’d still like to avoid the jquery-ui lib conflict.

Not sure about the sidetabs widget – I’ll check further.

I tried your first fix, but that stopped all hover functionality – the buttons became unclickable.  Still pursuing this with the theme creators too.

I want to let you and the Simple::Press team know that 5.1.4 is awesome, and I’m very glad we made the upgrade from 4.5.1!  Getting excellent feedback from our members.  Thank you all!

Thanks for the supportive comments!

I am a little surprised actually that just running the scripts in the footer solves the issue. But hey – it’s a good thing.

The real and proper fix really needs to come from the theme authors. The WordPress team have been trying to discourage authors from bundling these scripts for a while now – (they recently announced they will reject any plugins in their repository that do so) and hopefully will do the same for themes. It would make all of our lives easier!

Bundling old versions – and non-compatible versions – of the main libraries is bad enough but it get’s a lot worse when they add custom code into the same file which looks like the case with your theme.

We might be able to try testing if the page being loaded is a forum page. If it is load the kosher WP scripts and of not then use the theme scripts. But that would still stop any other functionality the theme scripts perform from working on the forum page – if there are any.

The only theme content on the forum page is the header/menu, breadcrumbs and footer:  http://www.ogaugehobbyist.com/wp/forum.

Ok – so if not in the header then probably OK. Good stuff.