WP Smith

Creating WordPress & Genesis Websites Since 2010

WordPress Contact Form Plugin Gravity Forms Updates Site, Plugin, Addons, & Documentation in v1.5

Gravity Forms WebsiteToday, we were notified that Gravity Forms has an upgrade available and when I checked they upgraded everything it seems. They've upgraded/redesigned their website, their support site and most notably, their documentation.

Gravity Forms "is a full featured contact form plugin that features a drag and drop interface, advanced notification routing, lead capture, conditional logic fields and the ability to create posts from external forms." Simply it makes form creation easy, straight forward, and saves a ton of time. Furthermore, with their new hooks/filters documentation, Gravity Forms Developers Documentationone can easily extend the use of Gravity Forms to create other forms besides basic contact and support forms! If you don't have Gravity Forms, you must get it now!

Gravity Forms Releases PayPal & User Registration Add-Ons

Gravity Forms has a small body of Add-Ons and in their newest release they have added a user-friendly way to install and activate these add-ons. Two new add-ons were released today too: PayPal and User Registration Add-Ons. The PayPal Add-On allows you to accept PayPal payments through a Gravity Form, including donations and recurring payments. The User Registration Add-On allows you to create user registration forms which include BuddyPress and Multisite integration (including integration with the PayPal Add-On).

Gravity Forms Addon Easy InstallGravity Forms PayPal AddonGravity Forms New User Registration Addon

What Can Gravity Forms Do?

Gravity Forms can create Contact Forms, Support Forms, Surveys, Polls, Guest Post Submissions, and User Generated Content. And now with their newly updated hooks/filters documentation, other form types will be limitless!

When I purchased it, I only purchased it to get rid of the craziness of using other form plugins that were clunky and difficult to style to create a Contact Form, the most popular use of Gravity Forms. You can gather basic information like: name, date, time, Phone, Address, Website, Email, and even upload files, and all of this information is validated to ensure that the user has entered the correct information (validates emails, phone numbers, etc!). It also comes with reCAPTCHA compatability for spam protection. However, I have gone beyond that to create other types of forms including surveys, polls, guest post submissions, and user-generated content. I am now experimenting with other types of form creation (and will report back later) with the hooks that I found in the code. Now with the documentation, it will be much easier.

Gravity FormsGravity Forms - Advanced FieldsGravity Forms - Post FieldsGravity Forms - Standard Fields

A few of the hidden great things about Gravity Forms is that it maintains a record of all submitted forms, ability to make notes on the submissions, email notes, conversion rate (# submitted/# viewed), and much more to come.

What's New in Gravity Forms v1.5

Multi-Page Forms

One of the most widely requested features is finally here, multi-page form capabilities. Using the new Page Break field you now have the ability split longer forms into multiple pages or steps. We have also integrated a visual paging status bar that can be used to show a progress bar or the steps involved in completing the form.

Pricing Fields

Pricing Fields allow you to create quotes and order forms. It features integrated pricing calculations and is compatible with the Gravity Forms PayPal Add-On. Pricing Fields consist of a Product Field, Option Field, Quantity Field, Shipping Field, Donation Field and Total Field. They allow you to easily turn your form into an order form and collect payments when combined with the PayPal Add-On.

Textarea Character Counter

Easily limit the number of characters entered into a textarea and include a visual character counter that lets them know how many characters are allowed and how many characters have been entered.

CSS Ready Classes

Easily create multi-column layouts using built in CSS classes. These keywords are custom CSS classes you add to the CSS Class Name option under the Advanced tab for each field. Using our pre-defined CSS class names you can easily create 2 or 3 column forms, display radio button and checkbox options in 2, 3 or 4 columns as well as turn a Section Break into a scrolling text field.

Default Notification

Gravity Forms will now automatically setup an Admin Notification that uses the WordPress Admin email as the Send To and includes all submitted form fields when a new form is created.

Post Field Enhancements

We have enhanced the content template capabilities of the Post Fields and extended them to the Post Custom Field. Now you can use the content template capabilities on the Post Title, Post Body and Post Custom Fields in the form builder. The Post Category field has been enhanced to allow for an initial placeholder value (ex. "Please Select a Category") and now supports Admin Only visibility to allow you to set a default category using the Post Category field.

Checkbox and Multiple Choice (Radio Button) HTML Support

The Checkbox and Multiple Choice (Radio Button) fields now support HTML in the option labels. This allows you to include links or use images as your options.

Shortcode Support

Love using Shortcodes? Need to insert custom code into the Email Notification, Confirmation Text or HTML Field content? Gravity Forms now supports utilizing Shortcodes in the Email Notification Message Body, Confirmation Text and within the content of an HTML Field.

Enhanced Bulk Edit Functionality

You can now reset views, or delete entries from the Edit Forms screen using enhanced options added to the Bulk Edit functionality.

New Hooks and Filters

We have added a variety of new hooks and filters, all of which are documented (with examples) in the brand new Documentation area of the support site.

Upgrade and Renewals

Now you can Upgrade or Renew your Gravity Forms License Key right from your WordPress Dashboard! Visit either the Settings page or the Update page. If an Upgrade is available, or you are within the Renewal period, you will be presented with options to purchase the Upgrade or Renewal.

Support For New Add-Ons

Gravity Forms v1.5 supports the introduction of the PayPal Add-On and User Registration Add-On which are now available for Developer License customers.

How to Switch Primary Sidebar to Secondary Sidebar for a Specific Page in Genesis

For one of my sites, the person wanted to use two different sidebars: one for his store and another for his blog. The rest of the site was full-width layout. So we used the two sidebars: Primary (sidebar) and Secondary (sidebar-alt). So here's how to switch sidebars (without using Nathan's phenomenal plugin Simple Sidebars) using functions.php.

[php]//switch sidebars
add_action('get_header','change_genesis_sidebar');
function change_genesis_sidebar() {
$pages = array(181);

if ( is_page($pages)) {
remove_action( 'genesis_sidebar', 'genesis_do_sidebar' );
add_action( 'genesis_sidebar', 'genesis_do_sidebar_alt' );
}
} [/php]

This code can be easily adapted to be done based on category, archives, author, etc. See the conditional tags for more details.

How to Customize Genesis's Search Form Text and Button Text

Customize the Search Form text
[php]add_filter('genesis_search_text', 'be_custom_search_text');
function be_custom_search_text($text) {
return esc_attr('Search');
}[/php]

Customize the Search Button text
[php]add_filter('genesis_search_button_text', 'be_custom_search_button_text');
function be_custom_search_button_text($text) {
return esc_attr('');
}[/php]

Add a Genesis Authorbox Anywhere Using My Genesis Authorbox Shortcode

As I am slowly developing a new plugin, Genesis Simple Authorbox, I realized that I should just release parts to the community that I believe would be beneficial. Follow these simple steps to incorporate the Authorbox Shortcode.

  1. Download the Genesis Simple Authorbox Shortcode: [download id="6"]
  2. Upload it to your Child Theme folder
  3. Add the following PHP Code to your functions.php file:
    [php]require_once( CHILD_DIR.'/genesis-author-box-shortcode.php' );[/php]

Now you can use [genauthorbox] to produce the Genesis Authorbox anywhere you'd like. This is also perfect for Genesis Child Theme developers using do_shortcode().

Attributes

[genauthorbox] takes a few attributes. They are:

  • before: Text/markup to place before the authorbox; default: <div class="author-box">
  • after: Text/markup to place after the authorbox; default: </div>
  • context: Context of the authorbox; default: '' NOTE: don't use this unless you are comfortable with it
  • title: Title of the authorbox; default: "About First Last Name" (e.g., get_the_author())
  • description: The author description/Biographical Info from Your Profile; default: (empty)
  • gclass: Adds a class to the gravatar img; default: alignleft
  • galt: Adds ability to provide an Alt Tag to the gravatar img; default: (empty)
  • gsize: Adds ability to resize gravatar image; default: 70
  • gemail: Fetch gravatar image by email (only changes the avatar & does not change the author information [e.g., title, description]); default: get_the_author_meta('email')
  • userid: Overrides gemail, title, & description with the default user's (title: About First Last; description: biographical info; gemail: user's email); default: (empty)

Example

[genauthorbox title="About Mr. Starbucks" Description="I am a hopeless Starbucks addict, freelance web designer..." gsize=72 galt="not me" gemail="[email protected]"]

Useful WordPress, Genesis, & Thesis Directory and URL (HTTP) PHP Constants

When creating WordPress plugins, themes, or tweaking plugins, themes, functions.php, you will often need to reference files and folders throughout the WordPress installation. Since WordPress 2.6 (if they are pre-2.6, then use die();), users have had the ability to move this directory anywhere they want, so you always want to avoid hardcoding so that the code is re-usable, especially with plugins. WordPress has defined a set of PHP CONSTANTS (by the way, constants are always UPPERCASE) to store the path to the wp-content and plugins directories. You can use these CONSTANTS in your plugins, child themes or functions.php for any paths you need regardless of where the actual directory might exist on the server.

  • WP_CONTENT_URL: Full URL to wp-content
  • WP_CONTENT_DIR: The server path to the wp-content directory
  • WP_PLUGIN_URL: Full URL to the plugins directory
  • WP_PLUGIN_DIR: The server path to the plugins directory
  • WP_LANG_DIR: The server path to the language directory

You can set your own CONSTANT_DIR by (as a reminder, constants are always UPPERCASE):

[php]define('CONSTANT_DIR', ABSPATH . 'wp-content'); //sets DIR[/php]

You can set your own CONSTANT_URL by (as a reminder, constants are always UPPERCASE):

[php]define('CONSTANT_URL', get_option('siteurl').'/wp-content/'); //sets URL[/php]

For GENESIS Users, some CONSTANTS of interests are:

  • STYLESHEETPATH: /.../.../.../..../.../.../wp-content/themes/child_theme
  • TEMPLATEPATH: /.../.../.../..../.../.../wp-content/themes/genesis
  • PARENT_URL: get_bloginfo(‘template_directory’): e.g., http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/genesis
  • CHILD_URL: get_bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’): e.g., http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/child_theme
  • PARENT_THEME_VERSION: refers to the Genesis version running
  • PARENT_THEME_NAME = 'Genesis'
  • GENESIS_LANGUAGES_URL (sets to Genesis Library for Child Themes)

For THESIS (1.8) Users, some CONSTANTS of interests are:

  • THESIS_CUSTOM = STYLESHEETPATH: /.../.../.../..../.../.../wp-content/themes/thesis_18/custom
  • THESIS_CUSTOM_FOLDER: get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory') . '/custom': e.g., http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_18/custom
  • THESIS_LAYOUT_CSS: THESIS_CUSTOM . '/layout.css: e.g., http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_18/layout.css
  • THESIS_ROTATOR:THESIS_CUSTOM . '/rotator': e.g., http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_18/rotator
  • THESIS_ROTATOR_FOLDER: THESIS_CUSTOM_FOLDER . '/rotator': e.g., http://domain.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_18/rotator

Are there any CONSTANTS that are used quite often that I missed?