These two pages do the exact same thing: Apply some basic validation rules to a form. The only difference is that the first one includes the scripts in <body>, not <head>. 1. http://www.asce.org/freemembership/ 2. http://content.asce.org/conferences/texasstudentdays/company_registration.html The second one works, and the first doesn't. For some reason, the first site doesn't bind the validate method to jQuery. $.fn.validate() throws an exception in the console. What's going on, and how can I fix this problem? The file itself is definitely being loaded. Thanks, Thomas