Products We Love: Gravity Forms

WordPress wouldn’t be such a great platform without the amazing community that surrounds it.  The people who work with WordPress have created some truly great products that have become a necessity in most (if not all!) of our projects.  Because these are so important to us and out business, we thought we should share them with you!

One WordPress plugin that we absolutely love is Gravity Forms!  Gravity Forms is one of my personal favorites and I know that I’m not alone. This plugin is listed on top plugin lists all over the internet and in numerous WordCamp presentations.  One of my favorite things about Gravity Forms is that it requires no coding skills to create a number of different forms with different fields, a variety of functionality and many notification options.  Having no coding abilities, this plugin is perfect for me!

If you have a general knowledge of the WordPress admin dashboard you should have no problem working with Gravity Forms! It is so versatile and can be used for a variety of needs. You really can create ANY form from a simple contact form to a robust, multi-page form that will notify different people based on different responses. No matter what kind of form you are looking to create, the drag and drop editor makes it easy and painless!

“Least favorite plugin?
Every contact form plugin that isn’t Gravity Forms (and they aren’t paying me to say that, but seriously, you should be Carl 😛 ). There is nothing that is even in the same universe as Gravity Forms when it comes to contact form plugins. The best part is contact forms are one of the features I use the least. The fact that I can create posts from form entries is a HUGE time saver. If you don’t own it, you should. –Brad Williams interview with WP Engine

Gravity Forms has allowed me to create a number of forms without any help from a developer. This is a really big deal to me because WebDev is a very busy company and requests for updates on our own website always get pushed behind our client work.

Here are a few examples of forms I have been able to make with no assistance from a developer:

• I set up a great project request form here on our website. When you select a Reason for Contact, the forms fields change to reflect that selection.
• For our Jobs page I created a job inquiry form that allows the user to upload documents. Emails are then forwarded to different people based on the job request and who will be reviewing the applications.
• On Tips on Trips and Camps I used Gravity Forms to create a form where the visitor can request information on a specific type of of camp experience. I used the multi-page feature to make the form less overwhelming and if you click on Language, Religious or Other you will see additional questions pop up regarding that selection. We also used the Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On to allow visitors to create an account at the end of the questionnaire.

If you are a developer you can go far beyond the example I have above. The options with this plugin are seemingly endless. If you are lucky enough to have a great development team like I do, you can go well beyond forms with this plugin!  WDS has used Gravity Forms to create some really cool and helpful features for our clients:

• Custom Gravity Forms Add-Ons – We have built a number of add-ons depending on the clients needs. On example is an add-on that creates additional, specific fields beyond the options included in Gravity Forms and integrate these new fields seamlessly into the form setup.
• Custom form processing- After form submitted the data is sent to another location outside of WordPress. For example we built a bridge between WordPress and SQL server and took submissions from Gravity Forms and copied them to an external SQL server database.
• Gravity Form eCommerce integration- We built an add-on that automatically sends the visitor to WooCommerce to purchase an item after they fill out a Gravity Form.

What do you guys think of Gravity Forms? Have you used the plugin in a different way than just creating forms? If you haven’t already go buy a copy of  Gravity Forms and check it out. You WON’T be disappointed!