Notes: 8/6/13 WordPress Meetup: Advanced Fun(ctionality) with Gravity Forms (ADV)

Advanced: Advanced Fun(ctionality) with Gravity Forms
Presenter: John Chandler
August 6, 2013, 7:00 PM  Capital Factory (in the Austin Centre),  701 Brazos St #1601

Gravity Forms is a popular WordPress plugin and with good reason: it is a simple way to create complex forms. But it is also capable of a great deal more as form elements can interact with each other and manipulate content on your site. We’ll go through a few code examples of how Gravity Forms is being used on live websites for dynamic user interactions and content updates. When we’re finished, hopefully, you can concoct a few new schemes of your own.

This meetup will be conducted by John Chandler who is a a freelance web designer and developer who has been working with WordPress since 2004.

John Chandler
Started working with WordPress v1.5
Bulk of what he learned was from WordPress Meetup
part-time pastor / part-time web site designer

Quick Survery: 1/2 attendees had worked with Gravity Forms; ~ 4 used it in-depth

John’s History – WP 2012 Dev Day – best thing that came out of it was learning about Gravity Forms http://www.gravityforms.com/
– paid plugin
– changed how he designed web sites – from content to ones with more interaction

SEE Gravity Forms Dev Doc for more info  http://www.gravityhelp.com/documentation/page/Developer_Docs
– Custom post in back end – very simple

John showed 3 sites he developed which use Gravity Forms in different iterations
https://www.helponenow.org/sponsorships/camelita-vincent/
https://www.morethanateacher.com/sat/lake-travis-october-2013-01/
http://www.reimaginegenerosity.com/

https://www.helponenow.org/sponsorships/camelita-vincent/
– view in feed items
– created as a draft
– interaction with no code – set up this form to create a p0st type when submitted
– need title field, kind of post types

– now more fun ones like
– ferrier village- one of first ones paid
– do a lot of work with orphans around world
– beefed up how someone can sponsor a child
– stripe as a panic gateway
– sends email notification
– shows update of (# of) sponsorship for the child

On the backend –
– a few different things going on
– important data – child’s name
– child id
– and post ID’s – in this case same as the post ID for the child

go to sublime text to look at code
http://byjc.co/sponsorshipform [https://gist.github.com/johnchandler/6169615]
– use advanced custom fields or git fields

– functions.php
– giforms after submission – which bascially, once this has been submitted,  will run
– differentiate with _9 so only this one form will run vs all gravity form
sponsor level-
e.g, entry 3, in form itself
– post #- entry 12 (wb post ID – need before can update ID)
– sponsors – how many have already sponsored
– then walk through conditional,
– if sponsor level chosen is 1 annually
– then create new account + 1

http://www.morethanateacher.com/
SAT test prep
old dreamweaver site

See form https://www.morethanateacher.com/sat/lake-travis-october-2013-01/
single template for a post type
– focus on new registration
– payment form on 2 pages

looking at workflow http://byjc.co/satcost  [full url https://gist.github.com/johnchandler/6169632 ]
– figure out what payment is supposed to (e.g, check school)
– build a roster for students who are taking the course by auto-populating
– again have to grab post ID
– form pre-renders – allows you interact data between pages (1 and 2)

JOKE: Saved by the Bell,  Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (okay, you had to be there, but it was FUNNY)

http://byjc.co/satroster  [https://gist.github.com/johnchandler/6169637]
– won’t inject name into roster until payment is good
– update post meta…review code
– every customer course has it’s own roster
– course by date by location? every post has its own ID
– no taxonomy for date, customer fields
– can adjust price on date? e.g pay x at if subscribed by this date, than x+y after this date
– page works by using ajax to reload form between pages

https://www.reimaginegenerosity.com/store/
Living Generously: alternative and unique gifts for good that change …
– build your campaign
– not for church or school
– with building campaigns, have to pay taxes
– dashboard widget – to show them

Other comments from attendees  who use Gravity Forms
Gravity Form good when adding new users
– they can edit their info through it,  which then notifies admin for new content to approrve
– advertising powered 99% by gravity forms
– business directory for different levels
– users never see backend
– registered users through Gravity Form, might be an add-on – not 3rd party
– depends on what you buy into, Gravity Forms has different add-ons
– can edit data through Gravity Form
– Gravity Form has a new Quiz app (John hasn’t tried)

Suggestions for long forms – when a new field is added, it goes to the bottom
– build form with xml and export it to make it faster
– seems doable, not too hard to parse it out.

Any performance issues?
– recommend to wpengine – so much database interaction going on with queries
Suggestion (BE) 2 things – rally does 4 queries so extra params can pull it back so it doesn’t do all 4

WPAUSTIN News –
In attendance: Brandon Kraft – as Automattician

STAY TUNED – BIG things happening on http://wpaustin.com
NEW  MEETUP SCHEDULE
WordPress for Developers: 1st Tuesday of each month (Capital Factory)
WordPress Deep Dive: A small, in-depth discussion of a problem, plugin writing, or other activity.  2nd Monday of each month (Posh)
WordPress for Beginners:  3rd Monday of each month (Austin Baptist Church)
Intermediate WordPress: (used to be Hands On) 4th Tuesday of each month (Build-A-Sign).
Design and Theme Development in WordPress: This is a brand-new meetup; schedule TBA
Social/Happy Hour: irregular