Pre sale Q

1) You can use Gravity Forms to create a form that will create a post and use the logged in user as the author. However, the Post Category field does not currently support checkboxes. It only supports drop downs, which means you'd have to add multiple Post Category fields to your form.

2) Yes, you can create a form that creates a post in a category that you set. The form doesn't have to have a Post Category field on it, you can predefine the category when configuring the Post Title and Post Body forms and there is a Post Image field for uploading an image.

3) No. The TinyMCE editor is not currently a feature so there is no WYSIWYG editor while posting like there is in the admin.

Featured Image is a separate issue, in Gravity Forms v1.6 there is an option on the Post Image field to assign that field as the featured image so when an image is uploaded it is used as the featured image.

4) Yes. You control the post status, it's a setting on the Post Title and Post Body fields. If you want it to create a draft then you can set that as the status.

5) No, front end editing is not currently an option. It only creates Posts, it doesn't edit them.

We provide support, but only for the features that Gravity Forms does out of the box. We can provide some guidance for customizations, etc. but we don't write custom code. So if you need to do something that can't be done out of the box you would have to implement it as a customization or hire a developer to do so.

It's easy to use for new users and non-coders, however once you start trying to do things with it that it wasn't designed to do or want to use it in more advanced ways you may need to work with a developer to make it do what you want it to do.

How would they write a blog? Using text and HTML. If you want to implement a WYSIWYG editor on a text area on the front end you can certainly do this as a customization. Gravity Forms does not include it as built in functionality. But it can certainly be integrated as a customization. Editors like CKEditor can easily be integrated with a textarea in Gravity Forms just like they can with any textarea.

Gravity Forms isn't designed to reproduce the blog editor that is in the admin. It can create Posts, but it is designed to create Posts where the admin can control the formatting, etc. not the user submitting the form. It isn't going to have the photo uploader and video uploader and insert tools that are in the post editor.

There is a Post Image field to allow them to upload an image. You can then configure a content template on the Post Body field which allows you to control and add markup and field values to the post body... so you could add that post image to the content template and the image they upload would automatically be added in the post body content when the post is created.