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1. Overview & Architectural Workflow

The Gravity Forms Auto Login Premium Add-on delivers seamless, instantaneous user authentication upon form registration. In traditional WordPress setups utilizing the official Gravity Forms User Registration Add-on, newly registered members are presented with a passive confirmation notice and must subsequently navigate to wp-login.php to manually re-enter their username and password. This unnecessary obstacle introduces friction and causes significant drop-off rates across membership communities, client portals, and LMS platforms.

By bridging Gravity Forms’ submission lifecycle directly into WordPress’s pluggable authentication subsystem, Form Auto Login intercepts the gform_user_registered hook. The add-on immediately flushes any stale cookies, sets the global user context via wp_set_current_user($user_id), and issues cryptographically verified session cookies (wp_set_auth_cookie) before transmitting the redirect headers. Members arrive at their personalized dashboard already fully authenticated.

2. Prerequisites & Compatibility

Ensure your WordPress hosting environment satisfies the following minimum system requirements before activating the add-on:

• WordPress: Version 5.8 or higher (fully tested through WordPress 6.6+).
• Gravity Forms: Version 2.5 or higher (Standard, Pro, or Elite license).
• Gravity Forms User Registration Add-on: Active and configured with at least one registration feed.
• PHP: Version 7.4 through PHP 8.2+.
• SSL (HTTPS): Required to ensure secure, encrypted transmission of WordPress authentication cookies.

3. Installation & License Activation

1. Log into your GravityExtra My Account dashboard and download the latest gf-auto-login-v-1.0.0.zip archive.
2. In your WordPress admin panel, navigate to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
3. Select the downloaded ZIP file, click Install Now, and then select Activate Plugin.
4. Navigate to Forms → Settings → Auto Login (or your GravityExtra License Manager tab) and enter your product license key to enable automated background updates.

4. Enabling Auto-Login in User Registration Feeds

The Auto Login feature is configured directly within your Gravity Forms User Registration feed settings. Follow these steps:

1. Go to Forms and hover over your desired registration form, then click Settings → User Registration.
2. Edit an existing registration feed or click Add New to create one.
3. Configure standard user mapping fields (Username, Email, Password, Name, and Role).
4. Scroll down to the Additional Settings section at the bottom of the feed editor.
5. Locate the Auto Login option and check the box for Enable Auto Login.
6. Click Update Settings to save your configuration.

5. Setting Up Confirmation Redirects to Member Dashboards

To maximize user experience, pair the auto-login feature with a Gravity Forms Confirmation Redirect:

1. Navigate to Settings → Confirmations on your registration form.
2. Edit the default confirmation or add a new confirmation rule.
3. Under Confirmation Type, select Redirect or Page.
4. Enter the URL of your member portal, onboarding flow, or LMS student dashboard (e.g., https://example.com/my-account/).
5. Save changes. Upon form submission, the user is authenticated in the background and redirected seamlessly into the protected destination.

6. Handling Email Activation Workflows

If your website enforces double opt-in account verification via the User Registration User Activation feature, Form Auto Login supports this natively:

• When a new registrant clicks the activation link in their confirmation email, the add-on intercepts the activation endpoint (gfur_activation / gpal).
• The account is activated and the user is instantly authenticated in a single transaction.
• The user is redirected directly to the configured activation landing page or member area without encountering a secondary login prompt.

7. Troubleshooting, Caching & Cookie FAQs

Q: Why does the user still appear logged out after redirection?

This typically occurs when full-page server caching (Varnish, Nginx FastCGI, Cloudflare, or SG Optimizer) caches the destination page HTML. Ensure your caching configuration respects standard WordPress logged-in cookies (such as wordpress_logged_in_*) so that authenticated requests bypass cached static HTML.

Q: Does Auto Login work with custom user roles?

Yes. The add-on works universally with whatever user role is assigned in your User Registration feed (Subscriber, Customer, Student, Editor, or custom roles created with User Role Editor).

Q: Can I control the “Remember Me” session duration?

By default, WordPress creates a session cookie that expires when the browser window closes. Developers can hook into the gpal_should_remember filter to force persistent cookies:
add_filter( 'gpal_should_remember', '__return_true' );