Gravity Forms Profile Fields Bridge Premium Add-on Setup Guide

Profile Fields Bridge joins Gravity Forms and the free Profile Builder plugin. A feed on your form creates or updates a WordPress account and fills its Profile Builder custom fields, a second kind of feed fills a form with the profile of the member who is logged in, a third turns a Profile Builder registration or profile update into an entry or a notification, and a fourth decides who may see and send the form.

What You Get

• A feed called Create or update a Profile Builder user. When the form is sent, or when its payment is completed, it creates a safe account for a visitor, or updates the profile fields of the member who is logged in.
• The fields come from Profile Builder itself. The feed lists the fields you made under Profile Builder, Manage Fields, and you pick a form field for each one. Values are saved with the save handlers of Profile Builder, so each field type keeps its own rules.
• Respect for the account settings of Profile Builder: when its Email Confirmation is on, the sign-up is handed to Profile Builder and the account is created when the person opens the activation link.
• A fill feed that puts the logged-in member’s profile values in the form, so one Gravity Forms form can be an edit profile form.
• An event feed that adds an entry to a form, sends its notifications, or both, when Profile Builder registers a user, when a user updates the profile, or when an account is activated.
• A limit feed that hides a form, and refuses a forged send, unless the visitor is logged in, has one of the roles you tick, or passes the Content Restriction rule of a page.
• Merge tags for the user and for each Profile Builder field, conditional logic, entry notes, and a clear notice when Profile Builder is missing or too old.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer.
• Gravity Forms 2.9 or newer.
• The free Profile Builder plugin, version 4.0 or newer. This version was tested with Profile Builder 4.0.5.
• A GravityExtra license key.

Install and Activate

1. Install and activate Gravity Forms and the free Profile Builder plugin if they are not active yet.
2. Upload and activate the Gravity Forms Profile Fields Bridge Premium Add-on.
3. Go to Forms → Settings → Profile Fields, enter your license key and press Activate.

If Profile Builder is missing, too old or switched off, a notice on the Forms screens says so. Your forms keep working and the entries are saved, but no account is created and no profile is changed.

Add a Create or Update Feed

Open Form Settings → Profile Fields, press Add New and keep the action on Create or update.

How the Profile Builder Fields Are Saved

The add-on does not write to the user meta table by hand. For a custom field it calls the save handler that Profile Builder uses on its own forms, the same one that runs when a member sends a Profile Builder form. A text field is saved as text, a check box list as a comma separated list, a drop down or radio button as the chosen option. If a value is not one of the options you defined in Manage Fields, it is not saved: a forged form cannot put a value in a drop down that Profile Builder would never offer.

The standard fields of Profile Builder work too: nickname, biographical info, website, and the first name, last name and display name. File uploads, avatars, headings and passwords are left out on purpose.

Account Safety

A form is open to everyone, so the add-on is careful with accounts.

• No takeover. If a visitor types the email of an existing account, nothing is created and nothing is changed. The entry gets an error note. A person who has an account logs in and updates the profile from there.
• Only profile fields. When a logged-in member sends a form, only the profile fields are updated. The email, username, password and role of an existing account are never changed by a form, even if the form has such fields.
• Safe roles only. A new account never gets the administrator role or any role that can manage users or the site, or edit content. If a feed was saved with such a role, the default role is used.
• Protected keys. A Profile Builder field whose meta key is a WordPress capability, user level, session or password key is never written.
• Empty is not deleted. A form field left empty does not wipe the value that is already in the profile.

Email Confirmation and Admin Approval

Profile Builder can ask new people to confirm their email address. When this is on in Profile Builder, and the feed has Follow Profile Builder ticked (the default), the add-on does not create the account itself. It hands the sign-up to Profile Builder, which keeps it, sends its own activation e-mail and creates the account when the person opens the link. The form fields are stored in the sign-up with a hashed password, and the entry note says that the sign-up is waiting.

When the person opens the link, Profile Builder creates the account with the role and the fields, and the entry is linked to the new user. The entry state changes from waiting to activated. If the same email already waits for its activation e-mail, a second sign-up is refused.

Admin Approval is a feature of the paid Profile Builder versions. When your site has it and it is on, the add-on asks Profile Builder to put the new account on hold, and the entry says so. The free Profile Builder does not have Admin Approval, so nothing is held there. Untick Follow Profile Builder on a feed to create accounts at once whatever the Profile Builder settings are.

Fill a Form From the Profile

Add a feed with the action Fill the form from the logged-in profile and map the form fields. When a logged-in member opens the form, the fields hold the profile values: text, drop downs, radio buttons and check boxes are selected, and the name parts of a name field are filled. A visitor sees an empty form. A value that the member typed before an error is kept by Gravity Forms. Combine this feed with a create or update feed on the same form and you have an edit profile form built in Gravity Forms.

React to Profile Builder Events

Add a feed with the action When Profile Builder registers or updates a user to a form that works as a log, a welcome list or a review queue.

Choose to add an entry, to send the notifications of the form, or both. The notification events Profile Builder: user registered, profile updated and account activated appear on forms that have an event feed. An entry holds the values you map: email, username, names, user id, role, what happened, the date, the Profile Builder form name and any Profile Builder field. You can limit a feed to one Profile Builder form by its name. The same event for the same user is handled once.

Limit Who Can See the Form

Add a feed with the action Limit who can see and send the form.

• Login. Only logged-in users.
• Roles. Tick the roles that may use the form. Administrators always see the form.
• Profile Builder content restriction. Follow the rule of the page that shows the form, or the rule of a page or post you choose. The rule is the one you set in the Content Restriction box of Profile Builder, and the add-on asks Profile Builder itself whether the visitor passes.
• Message. The text shown in place of the form. Leave it empty for a short default.

The form is not only hidden. A forged request that sends the form anyway is refused and no entry is saved. If Profile Builder is missing, a form limited by a Profile Builder rule stays hidden, so a deactivated plugin never opens a form by accident. The limit does not depend on the license.

Merge Tags

Use them in confirmations and notifications. A tag for an entry without an account is empty, not broken.

Entry Notes and Columns

Every feed writes a note: the account that was created, the Profile Builder fields that were saved, a refused email, a skipped visitor or a waiting sign-up. The entry list can show three extra columns: the Profile Builder user id, the state and the event.

Troubleshooting

• No field list in the feed. Profile Builder has no custom field yet. Add fields under Profile Builder, Manage Fields.
• A value is not saved. For a drop down, radio button or check box the value must be one of the options in Manage Fields, spelled the same way.
• The activation link does not work. Profile Builder builds the link. Check that Email Confirmation and its activation page are set in the Profile Builder settings.
• Nothing happens on submit. Check the license and look for an error note in the entry.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does it replace the Profile Builder forms?

No. Your Profile Builder register, edit profile and login forms keep working. The add-on adds Gravity Forms in front of or beside them: the same profile fields, with the form builder, payments, conditional logic and notifications of Gravity Forms.

Does it need the paid Profile Builder?

No. It works with the free Profile Builder from WordPress.org. Admin Approval is the one feature that belongs to the paid versions, and it is used only when your site has it.

Can a form change a role or an email?

No. A form creates accounts with a safe role and updates profile fields only.

Does it send my data to another service?

No. Everything happens on your own site. Only the license check talks to gravityextra.com, when you press Activate.

Profile Fields Bridge is part of the GravityExtra collection of Gravity Forms add-ons. See the Gravity Forms Profile Fields Bridge Premium Add-on for the details.

See the Profile Fields Bridge add-on