Loading Screen while Processing Large Forms (User Registration on Multisite)

Does this happen before the confirmation message is shown? It just appears to the visitor that the browser is hung and not really doing anything? If so, we just need to insert some sort of "loading" animation which lasts 30 seconds AFTER the form is submitted?

How about if you send them to an interim page which shows an animation, and then reloads after 30 seconds and directs them to the page you currently have as your Gravity Forms redirect?

Right now, you have:
Gravity Forms > Redirect to admin area

You could do:
Gravity Forms > Interim "loading" page > Redirect to admin area

Would that work? I am going to work on a page right now to do that for you. You will have to add your URL for the admin area to the page, and you can obviously customize it. I will just put something together quickly as proof of concept.

I'm not sure if that will happen or not. I don't think so, based on where the delay is occurring, but we can try it.

Here is the code: http://pastebin.com/rtiaqZem

Save that code to a file on your server which is accessible to the public. Call it "thank-you.html" or something. If it's in the root of your site, and your site is ktrusak.com, the URL that you use for the Gravity Form confirmation redirect would be http://ktrusak.com/thank-you.html .

Be sure to grab this image and save it in the same directory as the HTML file:
http://meridianivr.meridinet.com/chat/images/loadingAnimation.gif

Try loading that thank-you.html URL in your browser to make sure this part is set up correctly.

If that works, go ahead and modify the file at http://pastebin.com/rtiaqZem - you will need to change a couple things. The URL where you want to send them after the site is created, and the timeouts. I have the automatic redirect at 30 seconds and then if the browser does not obey that, there is a text link which will appear after 35 seconds. You can adjust both those numbers, and you need to change the URL from example.com in two places, to the URL you were using for the Gravity Forms confirmation redirect.

Update: this all works pretty well, but you may be right that the delay occurs after accessing the admin area of the new site, when first redirected there. I'm not sure how or when the sites are being created from your site template, so we will have to try this and if it does not work, come up with another solution. Let me know if you need any help with implementation. Thanks.

Yes, you could do that. That was my alternate approach :-)

Let me think about how to do that one, insinuate that loading gif into the middle of the process here, but still letting the site creation begin.

I guess what needs to happen is the admin area page needs to be accessed to start the site creation process; is that correct? What is unique about the URL that ensures that a new site is created with the new information for the latest visitor? Is the subdomain different or are there query string parameters sent along? What plugin are you using for creating the sites from a template?

So where is the delay coming from? As which stage?

There is a syntax error in that. You can try this. I didn't check it, but at least the syntax error is fixed:

[php]
add_filter("gform_submit_button_10", "form_submit_button", 10, 2);
function form_submit_button($button, $form){
    return "<a href='#loadlightbox' class='lightbox'><button class='button' id='gform_submit_button_10'><span>Submit</span></button></a>";
}

Report back please.