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Listing style data, entry and display

  1. I'm considering purchasing Gravity forms for a web site I'm building for my client. It's a commercial real estate firm and they need to have an admin enter their listings and then have those listings displayed on the public site. The visitor would see a list of the listings based on type (retail, land, etc). The list includes a subset of the data. The visitor then clicks on one of the list items to see a full display of the complete set of data for that listing. In addition to the usual data and a photo, they want to include a pdf file which could be downloaded by the visitor as part of the listing information.

    It seems like Gravity can do this but I want to find out for sure before I go ahead. Thanks.

    Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday November 22, 2011 | Permalink
  2. This is going to depend on how you want to store the Listings. Gravity Forms by itself isn't going to be enough to do what you want to do, it's going to require the use of other plugins and or theme customizations.

    You have three options...

    - Use WordPress Posts for the Listings and display the listings on your site by customizing your theme to present the posts as listings. Gravity Forms can do this out of the box because it can be used to create WordPress Posts. It isn't, however, going to display these posts on the front end. You'd have to customize your theme to do so.

    - Use Custom Post Type. Similar to WordPress Posts, only it's a custom post type. This requires a theme that supports the custom post type, or you'd have to customize your existing theme to do so. Most of the commercial themes designed for real estate agents use custom post types to store the listings. Gravity Forms can be used to create custom post types, but only through the use of the 3rd party add-on Gravity Forms Custom Post Types Add-On found here:

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gravity-forms-custom-post-types/

    - Use Form Entries. Gravity Forms stores all form submissions as form entries. They can be browsed in your WordPress admin. By default they cannot be displayed on the front end of your site. HOWEVER there is a 3rd party add-on that works with Gravity Forms to allow you to display entry data on the front end. You can find it here:

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gravity-forms-addons/

    Out of the 3 options I suggest #2. I would suggest looking at one of WooThemes or one of the other reputable theme developers who have a WordPress theme geared towards real estate listings that uses custom post types. Then use Gravity Forms and the Custom Post Type Add-On to create a form that can create a listing.

    One thing Gravity Forms doesn't do, nor do any of the real estate themes, is a PDF download. It's not something that is a feature and there aren't any existing add-ons for adding this functionality. It could be done, but you'd have to write your own customization to do so and use a service like http://pdfcrowd.com to generate the PDF.

    Ultimately Gravity Forms is only one piece of the puzzle. It's focus is forms, so it isn't specifically designed to be a turnkey real estate listing solution.

    Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday November 22, 2011 | Permalink
  3. Carl,
    Thank you for this well thought out reply. I think the custom post types is a good solution, so thank you for that.

    One other thing, I don't need the pdf to be generated, they will have it all ready and simply upload it using the form. The I would display an icon that the visitor can click on to download or display the pdf file. Does gravity forms allow for simple file upload? And if so, how does it store that in the db (eg. as a link, a blob, a pointer, etc)?

    Thanks.

    Lisa

    Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday November 22, 2011 | Permalink
  4. Yes, Gravity Forms would allow you to let them upload a PDF and store it with the post data as a custom field. Your theme could then return that as a link by getting the custom field value.

    Again, a lot of what you want to do is going to come down to theme functionality more so than Gravity Forms functionality.

    Gravity Forms will handle the form and data creation, but the theme has to display that information as custom posts.

    Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday November 22, 2011 | Permalink
  5. Thanks for your reply, I think I'll go ahead and give this a shot. Will let you know if I get stuck ;-).

    Posted 13 years ago on Monday December 5, 2011 | Permalink
  6. Lisa I'm going to close this topic. After your purchase, please feel free to begin a new topic in the support forums and we'll help you out.

    Posted 13 years ago on Tuesday December 6, 2011 | Permalink

This topic has been resolved and has been closed to new replies.