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I’ve spent some time finding out, why none of the lightbox plugins worked on my wordpress 2.7 blog site and as strange as it sounds: it’s the theme. I use SimpleX.
This theme uses a version of jQuery and creates an object refering to by $.

$(function(){
var tabContainers = $(‘div#maintabdiv > div’);
tabContainers.hide().filter(‘#comments’).show();

$(‘div#maintabdiv ul#tabnav a’).click(function () {
tabContainers.hide();
tabContainers.filter(this.hash).show();
$(‘div#maintabdiv ul#tabnav a’).removeClass(‘current’);
$(this).addClass(‘current’);
return false;
}).filter(‘#comments’).click();

});

The problem is, lightbox (or rather the prototype.js it requires) also uses that variable name $.
The solution for this problem is, to rename the variable the theme uses:

mjq(function(){
var tabContainers = mjq(‘div#maintabdiv > div’);
tabContainers.hide().filter(‘#comments’).show();

mjq(‘div#maintabdiv ul#tabnav a’).click(function () {
tabContainers.hide();
tabContainers.filter(this.hash).show();
mjq(‘div#maintabdiv ul#tabnav a’).removeClass(‘current’);
mjq(this).addClass(‘current’);
return false;
}).filter(‘#comments’).click();

});

Just edit /wp-content/themes/simplex/header.php by replacing the first by the second text mentioned above.

The only thing left to do is telling the jQuery SimpleX uses to not look for $ but for mjq. Therefore edit /wp-content/themes/simplex/js/jquery-1.2.6.min.js (or similar) replace the following:

var _jQuery=window.jQuery,_$=window.$;byvar _jQuery=window.jQuery,_mjq=window.mjq;
var jQuery=window.jQuery=window.$=function(selector,context)byvar jQuery=window.jQuery=window.mjq=function(selector,context)
window.$=_$;bywindow.mjq=_mjq;

Then you have a functioning WordPress running SimpleX and Lightbox.

attached files
mod_simplex_files