Wordpress MU - Shared Forms from the Main site to it's sub site.

Gravity Support Forums » Plugin Support » Gravity Forms

Mario
Member

Please Refer to the thread : http://www.gravityhelp.com/forums/topic/multisite-2#post-84324

Here is my question -
Hi I would like to add that I also am looking for this feature. I think the work around was neat, but I was hoping to do the reverse in terms since I have a Wordpress MU site with 44 sub sites ( sub-domain set-up ). As this thread starts, I wanted have 4 shared forms that I wanted to have all subsites use and the parent site administrator to be able to change in one form.

Can you please assist? I was able to implement the iframe suggestion but had to copy and import the main form to all 44 sub sites manually. As you can imagine just changing anything on those forms will become a pain since the changes would have to be repeated 44 times.

I am bit confused as to why this is so difficult. Wordpress MU offers the switch_to_blog function which correctly set the $wpdb handler to the right context. So maybe extend the shortcode properties for gravity forms can include a switchtoblog property that would could be used to scope the form correctly?

From previous posts and other similar request from users I have noticed that this still does not alleviate the issue of having to have the forms created in the sub sites since they need the table to capture the records, but looking the code in the plugin gravity_form.php if the scope of the $wpdb was already set by Wordpress it would already created the tables since that is what my read of deltaDb is doing.

Any thoughts on this?

Mario

Posted 12 years ago on Sunday October 28, 2012 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

I flagged this one for the developers to take a look at. Please be patient as it's the weekend now, and Gravity Forms headquarters is in for some inclement weather and will be closed on Monday at the very least.

http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2012/10/28/millions-across-east-coast-brace-for-uperstorm-sandy/

Posted 12 years ago on Monday October 29, 2012 | Permalink
Mario
Member

Thanks Chris, appreciate the follow up. Looking forward to the answer.

Mario

Posted 12 years ago on Monday October 29, 2012 | Permalink
Mario
Member

Hi Chris,

Just checking in to see if there has been any progress on my questions and how to solve them. Keep up the great work!

Mario

Posted 12 years ago on Tuesday October 30, 2012 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

I have not heard back from the developers yet. Hang in there. They are still cleaning up from the aftermath of hurricane Sandy.

Posted 12 years ago on Wednesday October 31, 2012 | Permalink
Mario
Member

Hi Chris,

Understandable, but just checking in anyway, since there is a bit of pressure on my end to deal with this issue.

Mario

Posted 12 years ago on Thursday November 1, 2012 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

If you use the iframe approach, can't you embed the form in one page, then include that page in an iframe in all the subsites? That would centralize the management of the form (in case you need to make edits) and also centralizes the management of the entries. Is there another issue with that that I am not seeing?

Posted 12 years ago on Thursday November 1, 2012 | Permalink
Mario
Member

Hi Chris,

Yes this is how I have it now, but iframes are not ideal for various reasons;
1. Browser support inconsistencies
2. Firewall block issues
3. Create problems for printing the webpage as well
and since the world is becoming more mobile aware. Iframes are even more unforgiving in mobile devices since because of the overhead in http requests. I took a look at the code for gravity forms plugin and was wondering why could it not leverage the multisite features to do this abit more seamlessly.

Here is my pseudo-code like thoughts on how to potentially make the [gravityforms ] shortcode able to do this:
1. shortcode function checks if Wordpress is in multisite mode.
2. If it is then it sets the context ( just to be safe ) to the current blog *restore_to_current_blog
3. Introduce 1 new parameters (parent_site="id") to allow gravity to know where the form is since it will not be current blog content.
4. Capture the current admin_email value of the current blog since more likely than not it will be what multisite sub-sites use for email to:
5. Inside the shortcode function then switch_to_blog(parent_site)
6. Do all it's normal code since the context is changed appropriately and the queries will be at the right table
7. restore_to_current_blog
8. Override the admin_email value with the one that capturing from the current blog
9. Watch the magic happen :)

There are some short comings and things to consider like where are the entries captured, and so forth since the form actually lives in the parent site, but this can be an evolution since I gather most multisite developers would just love to be able to centralize the parent as the form central and capture data there.

Thoughts?
Mario

Posted 12 years ago on Thursday November 8, 2012 | Permalink
Mario
Member

Hey Support,

Just wondering if you had a moment to look into this. Thanks.

Mario

Posted 12 years ago on Friday November 16, 2012 | Permalink
Chris Hajer
Key Master

I'll bring this topic to the attention of the developers once more.

Posted 12 years ago on Saturday November 17, 2012 | Permalink
Alex Cancado
Administrator

Hello Mario,
This is an interesting suggestion. We have had many multi-site users trying to centralize forms as well, so this is something we are willing to consider. We do have a lot of other things we are currently working on, so I don't see this feature being added soon enough to solve your immediate needs, but as I said, I will brainstorm this to the team and see if we can include it in one of the upcoming versions.

Posted 12 years ago on Wednesday November 21, 2012 | Permalink
lizfulghum
Member

Has there been any update on this topic? I am also interested in a solution for this.

Posted 11 years ago on Monday April 15, 2013 | Permalink
squibm
Member

I have the same issue.
0) Similarly the <iframe> solution is far less than ideal for multiple reasons discussed earlier
1) Have to create a naked blog (complicated & clutter) - and not documented..
2) Form responses scattered about create complication
Thanks,
Mark

Posted 11 years ago on Saturday May 4, 2013 | Permalink
me
Member

Any updates, I would also like to see a network wide form.

Posted 11 years ago on Tuesday May 14, 2013 | Permalink
David Peralty

No updates as of yet. Watch our blog for updates relating to this and all features.

Posted 11 years ago on Tuesday May 14, 2013 | Permalink