Can GF be used to build extended/complex user profiles?

Gravity Support Forums » General » Pre-Purchase Questions

Kris Zajac
Member

Hi,

I am working on a buddypress site (not yet sure if I base it on WP or WPMU) and need the users to create extended profiles.
Think linkedin.com, where users, apart from having basic profile, can enter job history (multiple entries), making them part of their profile. And then other users can write recommendations to these job history entries.

Can something like this be achieved using GF?
Specifically:
1. can form entires be tied to a specific user's/author's profile?
2. can form entries be later commented on by other users, and can those comments be possibly moderated by the original author? If comments are not supported then is it maybe possible to tie one form to another to achieve that effect?
3. if these functionalities are not available out of the box, then will I likely be able to implement them via hooks?
4. if not via hooks, then I guess I may need to customize GF code completely - in this case should I purchase site licence or do I need a developer licence?

Appreciate any help as GF seem to be my last chance, all other plugins failed to meet these requirements.

Thanks,
Kris

Posted 14 years ago on Tuesday March 30, 2010 | Permalink
Carl Hancock
Administrator

While you could use Gravity Forms to do this, it would make extensive use of hooks and custom PHP code to interact with Gravity Forms and the user database. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it due to the work involved, are there no good plugins for adding additional fields to user profiles?

Posted 14 years ago on Thursday April 1, 2010 | Permalink
RichardBest
Member

This is already possible with BuddyPress 1.2 and upwards. In a non-BuddyPress environment, it can also be achieved with the CIMY Extra User Fields plugin.

Cheers
Richard

Posted 14 years ago on Friday April 2, 2010 | Permalink
Kris Zajac
Member

Richard,

are you sure this is possible with BuddyPress?
Please note that I am not talking about a "flat" profile with some extra fields. I am talking about a profile that stores multiple records, e.g. job history.
I want user profile page to look like this:
------------------------------------------------
==== Basic Info ====
Name: John Doe
City of residence: New York
Hobby: parachuting

==== Job History ====
From-To: 2000-now
Employer: Company C
Position: Departament Head

From-To: 1994-1999
Employer: Company B
Position: Senior Consultant

From-To: 1991-1993
Employer: Company A
Position: Junior Consultant

[Add another job history item]

-----------------------------------------

I dont think BuddyPress can do that. I also looked at CIMY plugin and while it allows me to add custom fields to profile, it does not allow for multiplication of entries (as in job history example above).
Or am I missing something?

Thanks,
Kris

Posted 14 years ago on Friday April 2, 2010 | Permalink
erueschhoff
Member

Have you seen this plugin for adding custom fields to the profile/user record http://tribulant.com/products/view/7/wordpress-custom-fields-plugin. I have used it and had a good experience with it.

I had purchased gravity forms to create a specific form for members to fill out so that I could create a member directory -- but my problem is I really don't understand how to create the custom template that would have each post look the same -- actually I can't figure out how to get the form to post period. If someone could help me with this -- I will be happy to create a tutorial that you can include in your documentation because I think others have struggled with this same issue. I'm under a huge time crunch to get this launched by Monday so any input or help would be greatly appreciated.

Posted 14 years ago on Saturday April 3, 2010 | Permalink
toth
Member

+1

This would be a useful feature.

Posted 14 years ago on Tuesday May 11, 2010 | Permalink
erueschhoff
Member

I agree I haven't been able to get forms to post either and have been really disappointed with the lack of support or direction here. I have used the tribulent plugin but the way I understood it you can't use the extra fields created to display in a post - were you able to get the profiles and extra fields to display? If so I'd love to know how to do this.

Posted 14 years ago on Saturday June 19, 2010 | Permalink
drmunden
Member

Have you tried Verve Meta Boxes - very good for custom posts and easy to display inputted data. See here : http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/verve-meta-boxes/

Posted 14 years ago on Thursday June 24, 2010 | Permalink
Carl Hancock
Administrator

@erueschhoff What you are requesting support for is WordPress related and how to use custom fields and how to implement them in a WordPress theme template. Thats outside the scope of Gravity Forms itself.

If you have a Gravity Forms form that uses the Post Custom Field and you have not assigned that field a custom field name/key, it's not going to save the data. You have to give it a custom field name/key because this is the key that is used to store it in post meta data as a custom field. Without it, it won't be stored which is probably why you are having a problem.

As for how to implement custom fields in your theme, there are plenty of tutorials on how to implement custom fields in your theme. Just do a search for "WordPress Custom Fields" on Google and you will find plenty of them.

Please keep in mind that while we generally do assist with customizations and non-Gravity Forms issues, it is technically outside the scope of what we provide support for. We provide support for Gravity Forms core functionality.

The topic of this theme was using Gravity Forms to store user data. Gravity Forms doesn't do this so it would be a customization. With customizations we are glad to try and point you in the right direction and provide any code snippets we might have, however we can't write the code or research all work necessary for the customization because thats outside the scope of providing support for Gravity Forms core functionality and would take us away from support other customers and doing development on the next version of the plugin.

Posted 14 years ago on Thursday June 24, 2010 | Permalink
Mark R
Member

Have been trying to integrate CIMY with Gravity Forms. No luck. Anyone have any experience with the combo? CIMY works fine...extra fields are being populated correctly in extra user profile fields.

Separately, GF is correctly creating its own Entries complete with all fields, and although I "think" I mapped correctly using the GF Registration addon, GF's entries are NOT populating the extra CIMY user profile fields. GF DOES create the user, but only with the standard WP fields.

Any advice here? I am soooo close to a solution that would give me everything I want in the site without custom coding php and a custom db. I just need GF and the Registration plugin to map/populate the custom fields and I'm golden.

Thanks!

Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday April 5, 2011 | Permalink
Carl Hancock
Administrator

@Mark Are you positive that CIMY stores it's values in user meta? Do you know what key/name that CIMY uses for the user meta values for your fields? If you know what user meta key/name that CIMY uses for it's fields then you could add custom user meta fields using that name when setting up the integration.

Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday April 5, 2011 | Permalink
Mark R
Member

I knew when I typed the word "meta" I was making an assumption. I do not know into what table the new fields are being created. They might be in an entirely new table. On the GF User Registration Settings page, under User Meta, I have mapped four custom fields to the exact all-caps field names assigned by CIMY. But for all I know, I am in a different table. Ouch.

What can I do? Any advice? Might I have better luck with a plugin other than CIMY? I was going to try Tribulant Custom Fields next....but I'm drowning in test sandboxes already!

Thanks!

Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday April 5, 2011 | Permalink
Carl Hancock
Administrator

You would have to find out where CIMY stores this information, if it uses the user meta table or not.

Also, if it does store it's data in the user meta table it may actually use a prefix with the meta field name which means what you may think the name may be but it's actually not what you think it is. You'd have to find this out from the CIMY developers or by inspecting your WordPress database tables and looking in the user meta table.

You may want to look into another plugin, but i'm not sure which one is good as I haven't actually used any of them.

Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday April 5, 2011 | Permalink
Mark R
Member

So I'm clear......the Registration plugin as composed requires the custom fields to be in the user meta table, correct? The most straightforward solution would be to choose a plugin that creates additional fields in the meta table.

Is there any way around this, or should I ask, any EASY way around this? By changing the GF Registration addon code itself to process a custom field name in a different table?

Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday April 5, 2011 | Permalink
Carl Hancock
Administrator

Yes, the User Registration Add-On uses user meta. So if you use another plugin to manage this, it would also have to use user meta.

The way around this would be to customize the User Registration Add-On using the available API hooks which are documented in the Documentation area. But it would require custom code and you'd need to understand how the other plugin stores it's data and then write custom PHP to add your own options to the User Registration Add-On. It would certainly take knowledge of how hooks and the User Registration Add-On work to do this. Would suggest looking into another plugin first that uses user meta.

Posted 13 years ago on Wednesday April 6, 2011 | Permalink
macfocus
Member

I know it five months after...
But you could try taking a look at "Project Manager" If I am correct it "hooks" into the user profile.

Posted 13 years ago on Sunday September 18, 2011 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

Can you supply a link to Project Manager please?

Posted 13 years ago on Sunday September 18, 2011 | Permalink
macfocus
Member

Sure ; )

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/projectmanager/

Not sure if it fits the bill, but it's worth to take a look at it.

Posted 13 years ago on Monday September 19, 2011 | Permalink
Justin
Member

Hi Guys, we're looking for a good solution to display the user meta that is generated with the GF registration forms on the user profile pages in the back-end. So far no luck, just wanted to post here to see if anyone has figured it out.

The alternative is we're thinking of having a plugin developed that will enable this functionality... So if anyone has already done this please let me know :)

Posted 13 years ago on Wednesday November 2, 2011 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

There are certainly plugins available to extend the user profile. Here's one I saw recently:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-crm/

Also, Justin Tadlock wrote up a good tutorial on extending the user profile:
http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/09/10/adding-and-using-custom-user-profile-fields

It should not be necessary to reinvent the wheel. There's probably a plugin out there already.

Posted 13 years ago on Thursday November 3, 2011 | Permalink
Justin
Member

Thanks for your reply Chris,

Right, but I want to map all of the fields we create in the registration form to the user profile field... There's plenty of custom field plugins for profiles, but how can those sync up to the GF User Registration?

Posted 13 years ago on Thursday November 3, 2011 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

It depends on the plugin you select. With the Registration Add-on, you can map custom fields from the form to user profile fields. You need to know how your plugin stores the meta_key and then map that exact meta key name to the field you accepted in the registration form.

The actual names of the meta keys are dependent on the plugin.

Gravity Forms will capture the field information, the User Registration Add-on can be used to map form fields to usermeta profile fields, and a plugin or custom code will use those additional profile fields in the extended profile display.

Screenshot of the user registration feed mapping meta keys to form fields: http://min.us/mo8mufYA

Posted 13 years ago on Thursday November 3, 2011 | Permalink