Gravity Forms

What it helps you do

Collect inquiries, newsletter sign-ups, and other submissions with Gravity Forms that look like the rest of your Dirigible site. Fields, labels, and submit buttons follow Styles → Forms and Styles → Buttons. Dirigible also adds site-wide submission limits, campaign tracking helpers, pop-up and footer form placements, and form-care tools — while Gravity Forms itself still owns building the form, notifications, confirmations, and entries.

Where to find it

  • Plugins — install and activate Gravity Forms (and any add-ons you need).
  • Forms in the WordPress admin — create forms, set notifications and confirmations, and review entries (owned by Gravity Forms).
  • Appearance → Customize
  • Pages — insert the Gravity Forms block and pick your form (show or hide title and description in the block settings).
  • Dashboard — the Form Parameters panel lists the campaign parameter names Dirigible can fill when Gravity Forms is active.
  • Dirigible → Tools & Maintenance — Forms tools (config audit, entry/upload bloat, cleanup) when Gravity Forms is active.
  • Dirigible (theme tools) — Enable Spam Protection on All Forms turns on honeypot and submission speed check across forms that do not already have them.

How to use it

  1. Activate Gravity Forms and create a form under Forms (fields, required rules, notifications, and confirmations live there).
  2. Open Customize → Styles → Forms so inputs and labels match your palette; use Styles → Buttons if the submit button needs brand polish.
  3. Edit a page, insert the Gravity Forms block, select the form, and choose whether to show the form title or description.
  4. Optional: set Settings → Gravity Forms → Form Submission Limit if contact forms attract burst spam (limit is per visitor IP, per hour, across forms).
  5. Optional: put the same form ID in Pop-up → Content or set Newsletters to Gravity Form for footer sign-ups — see Pop-up and Newsletter.
  6. Preview the page on mobile and desktop, submit a test entry, and confirm the thank-you message or redirect page and the admin notification email.
  7. Optional: for campaign attribution, enable Allow field to be populated dynamically on hidden fields and use Parameter Names such as utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term, or gclid (listed on the Dashboard Form Parameters panel).

Build contact pages with the Gravity Forms block on the page itself — not by pasting a form shortcode into the footer.

What happens automatically

  • Gravity Forms’ own front-end stylesheet is turned off; Dirigible loads theme form styles so fields, layout, validation messages, progress bars, file uploads, and related field types match the site.
  • Forms in the block editor canvas use the same theme form styling so the preview stays closer to the live page.
  • Submit buttons inherit your button styles; validation and error states use palette Failure (and related form required colors) under Styles → Palette / Forms.
  • Modern form markup and HTML5 fields stay on; the default “required fields” legend above forms is hidden so labels carry the required cue.
  • Notification emails append a short line naming the site the submission came from.
  • When a visitor arrives with campaign URL parameters, Dirigible can remember first-touch values (unless the GDPR banner is blocking cookies) and fill matching dynamically populated fields on your forms.
  • Form Submission Limit caps how many times one IP can submit any form in an hour; the visitor sees a fixed “try again in an hour” message when the limit is hit.
  • Debug Hidden Fields (admins only) reveals ordinary hidden fields on the front end for troubleshooting — honeypot fields stay hidden.

Things to know

  • Creating fields, confirmations (message or thank-you page), notifications, and viewing Entries are Gravity Forms admin screens — Dirigible styles the visitor-facing form and adds the extras above; it does not replace those workflows.
  • The submission limit is sitewide (all forms share the hourly IP cap), not a per-form setting inside Gravity Forms.
  • Turn Debug Hidden Fields off on production sites when you finish testing.
  • Use Enable Spam Protection on All Forms as a one-shot hardening pass; forms that already have honeypot or speed check configured are left alone.
  • Prefer Safe Defer under Scripts & Embeds → Performance if jQuery defer breaks form behavior — Aggressive Defer is the setting most likely to conflict with Gravity Forms.
  • Entry spam cleanup, notification/confirmation audits, and upload bloat reports live under Tools & Maintenance, not in the Customizer.

Related settings and guides