Gravity Forms NextGEN Gallery Integration Premium Add-on Setup Guide

The Gravity Forms NextGEN Gallery Integration Premium Add-on sends the pictures your visitors upload through a Gravity Forms File Upload field into a NextGEN Gallery gallery. NextGEN does the real work of importing: it copies the file into the gallery folder, makes the thumbnail, fixes the rotation from the camera data and keeps its own database rows, so the images look exactly like the ones you upload by hand in the NextGEN screens.

You decide which gallery receives the images: one gallery you choose, a gallery the visitor picks from a list, or a new gallery made for each entry, each name or each logged-in user. You fill the title, the description and the tags of every image from the form with merge tags, you can add the gallery to a NextGEN album, and you can hold the images back until an administrator approves them on the entry screen.

What you need

• WordPress 6.5 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer.
• Gravity Forms 2.9 or newer. The add-on is tested with Gravity Forms 3.1.2 on PHP 8.3 and Gravity Forms 2.9.8 on PHP 7.4.
• The free NextGEN Gallery plugin from WordPress.org, version 3.32 or newer. The add-on is tested with the current release 4.5.3 and with the older 3.32.
• A File Upload field in the form. It can take one file or several files.
• An active license key for this add-on.

If NextGEN Gallery is missing or too old, the add-on tells you with a notice in the WordPress admin and on the feed list, and a feed does nothing until NextGEN is back.

Install and activate

1. Install and activate the add-on like any plugin, after Gravity Forms and NextGEN Gallery.
2. Open Forms → Settings → NextGEN Gallery and enter your license key.
3. Open the form that has the File Upload field, go to Settings → NextGEN Gallery and press Add New.

Your first feed

A feed is one rule: when this form is sent, take the images and put them in this gallery. Give the feed a name, leave the File Upload field ticked, keep the gallery choice on One gallery chosen here and pick a gallery from the list. Save the feed, send the form once with an ordinary photo, and open the NextGEN gallery in the WordPress admin: the picture is there with its thumbnail.

Which images are used

Every File Upload field of the form is ticked by default; untick a field to leave it out. Both the single file field and the multiple file uploader work, also when the form has several pages. Only real images are used: the file name must end in jpg, jpeg, png, gif or webp, the add-on checks that the file can be read as an image, and the file has to sit in the Gravity Forms upload folder. Anything else, a PDF or a text file named like a picture, is skipped and a note on the entry says why. The setting Most images per entry (1 to 50) stops a visitor from filling a gallery with one submission; the extra images are skipped with a note.

Choosing the gallery

One gallery chosen here

The simplest rule. The list shows every NextGEN gallery by title and number.

The gallery the visitor picks

Add a drop-down or a set of radio buttons to the form, choose it in Gallery field, and list your galleries in it with the Choices box described below. The value of each choice is the gallery number. If the visitor leaves the field empty you can send the images to a fallback gallery, or to none, in which case nothing is added and the entry note says so. The add-on only accepts galleries that the feed allows. A visitor who changes the form in the browser and sends another gallery number gets nothing: the images are not added and the note names the problem.

A new gallery

Type a name with merge tags, for example Open day – {Your name:1}. Also available are {entry_id}, {form_title}, {user_login} and {date}. NextGEN makes the gallery with its own folder and address name. You can add a description, and you choose how galleries are reused: a new gallery for every entry; the gallery that already has this name, made when it is missing; or one gallery per logged-in user, while visitors who are not logged in get a new gallery each time. The gallery author is the user who sent the form.

A page for the gallery

NextGEN galleries have no address of their own, so the add-on can make a WordPress page that holds the NextGEN gallery shortcode, exactly as the NextGEN button Create a page does, and links it to the gallery. Choose a published page or a draft. With approval, the page is made when the images are approved. A gallery that already has a page keeps it.

Choices: galleries and albums in a form field

Under Choices pick the form field that should list the galleries and, if you want, the field that should list the albums. The choices of a drop-down, radio buttons or checkboxes are replaced every time the form is shown, so a new gallery appears in the list at once. You can limit the list: only the galleries of one album, never some galleries (numbers separated by commas), or only the galleries made by the logged-in user, which suits a members area where everyone fills a gallery of their own. The same rule is checked again when the form is sent.

Albums

The gallery can be added to a NextGEN album: one album you choose, the album the visitor picks in a field, or the album with a name you type with merge tags, made when it does not exist. The gallery is added when its images are public, at once or after approval, and only once.

Title, description and tags

The three boxes Title (alt text), Description and Tags take merge tags, so you can use any field of the form. Extra tags work only here: {filename} is the file name without the extension, {index} counts the images of the entry from 1, and {entry_id} is the entry number. Tags are separated by commas, at most 20 per image, and become NextGEN image tags. If the title is empty, NextGEN uses the file name. All text is cleaned of HTML before it is saved.

Approval

With Approval you choose what happens before the images are public.

• No approval: the images are public as soon as they are imported.
• Hide the images: they are imported with the NextGEN exclude flag, so they do not show in any gallery display until an administrator approves them.
• Pending gallery: they stay in a separate pending gallery, which you choose or which the add-on makes once by name, and move to the real gallery when approved.

The entry screen then shows a NextGEN Gallery box with the status, a link to the gallery and every image as a thumbnail. Approve images makes them public, adds the gallery to the album and makes the page. Reject images deletes them from NextGEN, files and database rows. Both buttons check a security token and the right to edit entries, and both leave a note on the entry. The notification events NextGEN: images approved and NextGEN: images rejected let you tell the visitor or your team.

Thumbnails

NextGEN creates the thumbnail itself while it imports an image, with the sizes you set in its own settings. The option Thumbnails checks afterwards that the file exists and asks NextGEN to make it again when it does not. If it still fails, a note says so; the image itself stays in the gallery.

Merge tags

• {nextgen_gallery_id}: the number of the gallery.
• {nextgen_gallery_url}: the address of the gallery page, empty when no page was made.
• {nextgen_gallery_name}: the title of the gallery.
• {nextgen_image_count}: how many images were added.
• {nextgen_status}: pending, approved or rejected.

Use them in confirmations, notifications and other merge tag boxes. With two feeds on one form the tags describe the last one.

Conditional logic, payments and notes

The feed has the usual condition box: add the images only if a field has a value. If the form takes a payment, the option Add the images to the gallery only when payment is completed appears with your payment add-on and holds the feed until the payment is done. Every run writes notes on the entry: how many images were added, to which gallery, which files were skipped and why, and every decision of an administrator. The entry list can show and filter the columns NextGEN gallery ID and NextGEN images status.

Files and privacy

The add-on contacts no outside service. It copies the files that Gravity Forms already stored on your server into the NextGEN folders, so each image exists twice: once in the Gravity Forms upload folder, linked to the entry, and once in the gallery. Deleting an entry does not delete the gallery images, and rejecting images does not delete the Gravity Forms copy. Uninstalling the add-on keeps galleries, images and entry data.

Troubleshooting

• No feed can be added: check the license under Forms, Settings, NextGEN Gallery, and that NextGEN Gallery is active.
• Nothing happened after the form was sent: read the notes on the entry; they name the skipped files and the reason.
• The image is in the gallery but not on the site: the gallery needs a page or a NextGEN gallery block or shortcode; use the page option, or add the gallery to a page yourself.
• A thumbnail is missing: check that the PHP image library (GD or Imagick) can read the file type, then run NextGEN Regenerate Thumbnails.

Questions

Does it work with the paid version of NextGEN?

The add-on uses the functions of the free NextGEN Gallery plugin, which the paid version builds on. Galleries and albums made by the add-on are ordinary NextGEN galleries and albums.

Can visitors upload without an account?

Yes. That is the normal case. The gallery author is then user 0 unless the visitor is logged in.

Is the original photo changed?

No. NextGEN imports a copy. The copy follows your NextGEN settings for backup, resizing and watermarks.

Can I add images to a gallery later, from another entry?

Yes, with a fixed gallery or with a named gallery that is reused, every entry adds to the same gallery.