Gravity Forms 2.5 Upgrade Guide

Gravity Forms v2.5 and later represents a major change in how this plugin works. 

If your site was built prior to this version of Gravity Forms, there may be conflicts if you choose to update to this version of Gravity Forms. These may be limited to minor style/CSS issues or may be as serious as impacting the ability for forms to be submitted. 

We have updated our Newfangled Gravity Form Helpers plugin to provide some functionality in an attempt to make this update more seamless. 

If you do wish to upgrade to the 2.5 or later version of Gravity Forms, we strongly recommend that you do so in a staging environment and ensure that all of your site forms look and function as expected. You may decide to leave any differences in styling as-is, or you may decide to work with your developer to make visual changes as needed. 

After updating Newfangled Gravity Form Helpers to the latest version, there is a new setting called ‘Adjust Gravity Forms 2.5 CSS Styles’. Checking this new setting will add some CSS override classes that may help your form styling (particularly validation) be more consistent with how it originally looked before the update. 

Additional notes regarding the Newfangled Gravity Form Helpers 1.2.6 Release

This version of the plugin removes the old, deprecated ‘Newfangled reCaptcha’ custom Gravity Form field type. Gravity Forms has supported the v2 Invisible reCaptcha tool natively for a while, and this field hasn’t been used by Newfangled in several years. If your site is older than that, you should make sure this field is not being used. If it is, Newfangled can help replace it with the built-in Gravity Forms reCaptcha field. 

What Happened

With the release of version 2.5, Gravity Forms has introduced a number of major changes. Some of these have a direct impact on the way your site looks and works:

1. “Interactive” functionality–such as the dynamic display of conditional fields and the inline-display of response messages–works differently. This could lead to ‘privacy’ fields not functioning properly and the correct inline response for things like Content Upgrades not appearing after the form is submitted.
   
2. The HTML structure of the forms created by the plugin has been modified. This could cause your previous form-related CSS styling to look different. 

What We’ve Done

To provide compatibility between this new version of Gravity Forms and all of the Newfangled-specific functionality, we’ve released an update to our Newfangled Gravity Form Helpers plugin. If updating to Gravity Forms 2.5, you *must* also update the Newfangled Gravity Forms Helpers plugin to 1.2.6. 

Your Options

If you elect to not update to the latest version of Gravity Forms, no further action is necessary. Your site will continue to look and function the same as before.

If you decide to upgrade, we strongly recommend following the steps outlined here. We’ve done everything we can to ensure all incompatibilities introduced by the new version of Gravity Forms have been addressed with our new release. However, every site is different, and this guide outlines how to ensure no issues are introduced to your form functionality as a part of the upgrade. 

Our release of v1.2.6 of the Newfangled Gravity Form Helpers plugin includes several CSS classes to help minimize the front-end visual changes to your forms. That said, there is a strong possibility that your forms will look different in some way after the upgrade. If that’s the case, you have the following options:

1. Leave differences as-is.
2. Make the necessary CSS changes to account for the new HTML structure. 
3. Revert to the 2.4.24 version of Gravity Forms to retain the styling that you had before. 

Step 1: Upgrading

1. When at all possible, perform major plugin updates like this on a staging site and test first before updating your live site. If that’s not possible, make sure you have a backup of your live site so you can revert if you find any visual or functional issues. Most hosting providers like WPEngine provide both staging sites as well as backup/restore functionality.
   
2. Update the Gravity Forms plugin to the latest version (2.5.2 or higher) and the Newfangled Gravity Form Helpers to version 1.2.6. Be sure to review the release notes for every version between the one you had previously and the latest version.
   
3. If you have any caching functionality in place (for instance, by a performance plugin or a server configuration), clear the cache(s).
   
4. Ensure the following plugin settings are checked (where applicable). If the Newfangled Plugins were installed within the past two years, these should already be set. But it’s best to check just in case:
   
   1. Settings > Newfangled Gated Content > Show Gated Content via Ajax
   2. Settings > Newfangled Webinars > Show Webinar Content via Ajax
   3. Settings > Newfangled Progressive Profiling > Show Progressive Profile values and Smart CTAs via Ajax
      

Step 2: Testing

1. Fully test your staging site to ensure all forms are functional. See the Newfangled Plugin Testing Best Practices documentation. If you notice any issues or have any questions, reach out to Newfangled for further assistance.
   
2. Review any visual changes to the form caused by the new HTML structure. The exact nature of any differences will depend entirely on how your CSS has been written.
   
3. If you have questions about any of these steps or run into any issues, we will do our best to offer support and suggestions.
   
4. Once these steps have been completed and you’ve ensured everything looks and functions properly, you may proceed with updating the Gravity Forms and Newfangled Gravity Form Helpers plugins on your production site.