 <p>Your plugin should add a class or maybe a .data cache item to elements that have already been activated by the plugin. Then inside your plugin you can ignore an element if it has already been activated.</p> <p>Also another way is just to select elements from the fragment returned by the ajax call.</p> <pre><code>$('.class').plugin(); $.post(url, function(response) { // add more .class elements. $(response).find('.class').plugin(); }); </code></pre>