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Gravity Forms 2.7 Release Candidate 2 – Test it Today!

By Gravity Forms Published January 4, 2023

We are pleased to announce the release of Gravity Forms 2.7 Release Candidate 2!

Gravity Forms 2.7 sees a focus on streamlining processes for both new and existing customers – from the installation of the plugin, to the creation and styling of forms. Users will benefit from a redesigned Setup Wizard, a built-in template library, and significantly improved form styling options via a new form theme and block styling settings.

Gravity Forms 2.7 RC 2 is now ready to test and we are calling on our community of developers, designers, and everyday users to install 2.7 RC 2 (in a sandbox environment) and let us know how you get on!

Find Out More About 2.7

As always with our major releases, 2.7 packs a punch with a range of impressive new features. These include…

• Form Template Library – Our premade, fully-customizable form templates will help you get started in minutes, or can be used as a jumping off point for more complex form builds.
• Form Theme and Block Styling Options – A new front-end form theme, named Orbital, and block styling settings will enable you to easily customize the appearance of your forms, no CSS needed.
• Setup Wizard – A redesigned Setup Wizard will give new customers a user-friendly experience from the get-go.
• Honeypot Field Enhancements – JavaScript will now be used to inject another honeypot field into the form right before it is submitted, helping to identify and reduce the number of spam entries.
• Developer Features – A  significant shift in how we build our products sees us now using React and our new component library to create our back-end UI. This will significantly benefit our developer community, and the experience of building on Gravity Forms.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these…

Form Creation Made Easy

Building a new form has never been easier with the new form template library that ships with Gravity Forms 2.7. Our pre-made form templates (also provided on our website) are now offered directly within Gravity Forms when a new form creation process is initiated.

These templates allow you to immediately start any new project with a complete form, which can then be customized to suit your exact requirements.

Templates that you can expect to find in the new library include…

• Contact Forms
• Survey
• Event Registration Form
• Payment Forms
• Donation Form
• User Registration Form

No more confusion on how to get started with a new form, or need to re-build forms from scratch for each new website – simply choose the template that most closely resembles your project brief, and then get customizing!

Form Styling Out of the Box

If you’ve ever had trouble getting your forms to look exactly how you want, then you are going to love the new styling options we’ve added to the block settings.

With 2.7 you’ll find a new, highly extensible front-end theme framework, which incorporates a new form theme – Orbital! When using Orbital, you’ll find built-in block styling options, allowing you to tweak the color scheme of your form, alter the size of inputs, modify button styles, and much more!

Get ready to easily customize the appearance of your front-end forms – all from within the block editor with no CSS needed!

Find out more about Orbital and the block styling options in the Gravity Forms documentation.

Streamlined Setup Process

The Setup Wizard has been redesigned from the ground up to ensure a user-friendly experience that will quickly onboard new customers. And if you’re a seasoned customer in a hurry, we’ll know you’ll appreciate the faster setup times!

Further information on the Setup Wizard can be found on the docs site.

Enhanced Spam Protection

Requests for improved spam form protection are something we hear constantly, so 2.7 addresses this issue head on by adding a more sophisticated honeypot mechanism to Gravity Forms.

Alongside the traditional honeypot spam protection method, JavaScript will now be used to inject another honeypot field into the form right before it is submitted. This will help to identify and reduce the number of spam entries.

You’ll also be able to configure your honeypot settings, opting to not create an entry when a spam form is submitted, or create an entry and mark it as spam, allowing you to check for false positives.

For more information on the 2.7 honeypot enhancements, check out this article in the Gravity Forms documentation.

More For Our Developer Community

We are proud to have such a strong and engaged developer community here at Gravity Forms, and the add-ons and extensions that are created by this talented bunch constantly impress us!

In 2.7 we have started building our 2.7 back-end features using React, creating a component library, a React build system, and a number of NPM packages. This means that, if you’re a developer, you can use our component library and build systems in your own add-ons, without having to worry about what version of Gravity Forms your users have.

More information on this coming soon!

Install Gravity Forms 2.7 RC 2 Today!

We are asking all members of our community to test 2.7 RC 2 and get in contact with any comments, questions, or feedback. This will help us to continue to identify and make the necessary changes and improvements needed before the final release of 2.7.

Before we run through how to install 2.7 RC 2, it is important to note that it is not recommended for production sites – you should install and test 2.7 RC 2 in a sandbox environment.

So let’s find out how to get started with Gravity Forms 2.7 RC 2…

1. Open your WordPress staging environment and if you have the current Gravity Forms plugin installed, you will need to Deactivate and Delete it from your site.

2. Switch over to your Gravity Forms account page. Under Downloads, you will find 2.7-rc-2.

3. Download 2.7 RC 2 and upload it to your development site – it’s as simple as that!

For those who previously installed 2.7-beta or RC 1, if you don’t have automatic updates enabled, simply update the Gravity Forms beta plugin within your WordPress dashboard.

You can reach out via our normal help channels if you have questions about the features and updates within Gravity Forms 2.7 RC 2.

Best Practise for 2.7 RC 2

Check out these top tips for testing Gravity Forms 2.7 RC 2…

• Don’t Install 2.7 RC 2 on Your Live Site – As we mentioned, 2.7 RC 2 is not recommended for production sites. Even if you test 2.7 and think everything is working, you should still not use it on your live site.

• Check Out the Docs – As always, the Gravity Forms Support team has written supporting documentation to help everyone easily access 2.7 RC 2 and understand its many features as well as current known issues.

• Give Us Feedback – The beta/RC period enables us to collect and evaluate feedback from our customers. If you have any suggestions or discover any issues, please contact our Support team and let us know!

Gravity Forms 2.7 RC 2 Changelog

• Added a button in the block editor to reset block styles to their default values.
• Added the gform_get_form_save_email_confirmation_filter filter for the confirmation message that appears when a user has entered their email on a form with save and continue enabled.
• Added the ability to copy and paste form styles using the Gravity Forms block editor.
• Added theme framework wrapper classes and data attributes to form confirmation wrappers.
• Added underlines to links in the Form Validation Summary for better accessibility.
• Updated form templates so they are optimized for accessibility.
• Updated the Theme Framework to use helper classes and mixins for disabled, focus, and error states.
• Updated the form editor save button style.
• Updated the form submit spinner to use new Theme Framework styles.
• Updated the image in the drag and drop instructions on an empty form.
• Updated the setup wizard to fit on narrower screens.
• Updated the setup wizard to redirect to the forms page on completion.
• Updated the template library thumbnails.
• Fixed a fatal error that can occur in some hosting environments with PHP 8+.
• Fixed an issue in the template library that caused some items to be mispositioned when using an RTL language.
• Fixed an issue which causes users with non-standard license types to receive improper access level messaging within the Template Library.
• Fixed an issue which causes Theme Layers to appear on the Logging page.
• Fixed broken styles in the e-commerce form template.
• Fixed an issue with Honeypot that prevents the Save and Continue functionality from working properly.
• API: Added a “block_editor” admin page type to allow add-ons to easily enqueue scripts and styles to the block editor via the scripts() and styles() methods.

Gravity Forms 2.7 RC 1 Changelog

• Added security enhancements.
• Added a color contrast checker to the block editor to notify users when low contrast color combinations are used.
• Added performance improvements to form submissions for forms with lots of confirmations.
• Added performance improvements to form rendering.
• Added performance improvements to merge tag processing. Credit: The GravityKit team.
• Updated the Orbital theme’s primary blue color to #204ce5 to prevent a color contrast accessibility issue.
• Updated the date field enhanced UI to work with the theme framework.
• Updated the multi-file upload to work with the theme framework.
• Updated the select and multiselect fields’ enhanced UI to work with the theme framework.
• Updated setup wizard so that information entered by users is saved.
• Updated the form preview in the block editor to display the form if it has conditional logic.
• Updated form theme setting in the block editor so it will not display for forms in legacy mode.
• Updated form templates so that they are translatable.
• Updated form template library UI to be less confusing.
• Updated the form block to use modern React syntax and our existing build system.
• Fixed a JS warning that is displayed when selecting colors for the Orbital theme on the block editor.
• Fixed a performance issue where the gform_layout_editor script is being localised outside the editor for a form that doesn’t exist. Credit: The GravityKit team.
• Fixed an issue with the template library that prevents notifications and confirmations from being created.
• Fixed an issue with the embed form radio input alignment.
• Fixed an issue which causes legacy forms to display Orbital styles if they exist.
• Fixed an issue where the Gravity forms datepicker style is being applied outside of Gravity Forms.

Ready to Install 2.7 Release Candidate 2?

Gravity Forms 2.7 RC 2 is available for you to install on your sandbox environment – we can’t wait for you to try it out. Just pop over to your Gravity Forms account and get started with 2.7 RC 2 today!