April 27, 2021: Fixed an issue with GF 2.5 and default Checkbox fields values.
April 13, 2021: Fixed a compatibility issue with GPPA.
March 18, 2021: Fixed parsing of
titleanddescriptionboolean values in shortcodes.March 15, 2021: Fixed an issue where Cache Buster would not display a form's title.
October 1, 2020: Migrated snippet to the Snippet Library.
September 14, 2020: Added support for passing URL parameters.
Overview
I think if there’s one thing everyone in the WordPress community agrees on, it’s this: caching is awesome. It improves the performance of your site and reduces the bandwidth required to load pages and files. WordPress-specific hosting providers typically cache pages by default, and if you’re managing your own server you can add any number of plugins, such as WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and many more that can immediately improve page load times. If you aren’t taking advantage of caching on your site, you should.
If you use caching on your site, you should know that it can sometimes cause unexpected side effects with Gravity Forms. This can be further compounded when using our Perks, like Populate Anything, Nested Forms, and Limit Choices. To avoid this, it is recommended to bypass the cache on Gravity Forms with dynamic features.
One solution for this is to simply exclude those pages from the cache, but you lose the benefits of page caching. A better solution is to only bypass the cache for the form itself, and we cooked up a Cache Buster plugin to do just that.
It loads the form via AJAX (not to be confused with submitting the form via AJAX), bypassing the WordPress cache for the form only. This allows the page cache, and the performance boost that goes with it, to remain intact.
Using the Plugin
Prerequisites
Confirm that you have Gravity Forms installed and activated and that you’ve installed and activated the plugin.
Using the Shortcode
When adding a form to a post or page via the [gravityforms] shortcode, simply add the “cachebuster” parameter:
[gravityforms id="123" cachebuster="1"]The form will then load via AJAX , bypassing the WordPress cache.
Apply to All Forms
If you would rather apply the Cache Buster to every form on the page, you can do so by adding the following line to your theme’s functions.php file.
add_filter( 'gfcb_enable_cache_buster', '__return_true' );The Cache Buster will now automatically apply to every form on your site.
Known Limitations
Cache Buster does not work with single File Upload fields due to browser security. It does work with Multi-file Upload fields since they upload via AJAX.
Fresh Forms for Gravity
Another solution for automatically bypassing the cache is Fresh Forms for Gravity. It supports most of the caching plugins out there and requires no setup. Simply install it and your forms will be excluded from the cache.
Did this resource help you do something awesome with Gravity Forms? Then you'll absolutely love Gravity Perks; a suite of 33+ essential add-ons for Gravity Forms with support you can count on.
Hello guys!
Thanks for this! I’m trying it in a site now.
It’s working great!
The only thing that is happening is that I have 2 checkboxes already marked in the form’s settings, that is, when loading the form, these checkboxes already appear selected. But, when using Cache Buster, these checkboxes load unchecked. Any ideas?
Cheers
Hi John,
I’m passing this over to our developers to take a look into this. We’ll update this comment when the issue has been resolved.
Best,
Hello Samuel! Thanks
Another situation I’m seeing is: fields which uses merge tags to populate its values aren’t working also
Best :)
Hi John,
Thanks for the heads up. I wasn’t able to reproduce this issue locally. If you have an active Gravity Perks license, you can get in touch with us via our support form with your account email, so we see how best we can assist you.
Best,
Hi, My forms that are using the cache buster setting will not load since the updating to the latest version of Gravity Forms. Have you had any other reports of this? Many thanks Mel
Hi Melissa,
Thanks for letting us know. I am forwarding this to our developers to work on a fix. We’ll update this comment when the fix is ready.
Best,
Hi Melissa,
After further testing on our end, the cache buster works without any issue on Gravity Forms 2.5. I was only able to recreate the issue with one particular form but when I created that form, I was unable to recreate the issue on the new form.
This appears not to be an issue with the snippet but a form-specific issue. If you have a Gravity Perks License, you can get in touch with us via our support form so we can dig into this further.
Best,
Hi,
I have just installed your cache busting plugin. Thank you – I had tried everything else still couldn’t return to a partially filled form if I wasn’t logged in. I don’t want to display the title nor description on my form, so my gravity form shortcode previously had set title and description to false.
[gravityform id="1" title="false" description="false" cachebuster="1"]
This is working on Chrome (desktop) but it is still showing the title on Safari (iPhone) and Firefox(desktop). Am I using the shortcode correctly?
Many thanks
Hi Melissa,
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I’ll pass this over to our developers to take a look into this. That said, as a workaround, you can use the shortcode without the title and description parameter. Something like this [gravityform id="1" cachebuster="1"], should do the trick and ensure the Title and Description aren’t displayed on the form.
Best,
Guys, The live merge tags does not work when cache buster is enabled.
Any suggestion?
Hi Don,
I am unable to recreate the issue you’re experiencing. The Live Merge tags works as expected when I tested it on my end. If you’re a Gravity Perks customer, you can get in touch via our support form so we can assist you further.
Best,
Does not work with Gravity Forms Stripe…
When using this and stripe v3.85, the cache buster breaks stripe such that the credit card field is hidden – I’m guessing it interferes with the stripe iframe from showing…
Disabling the cache buster allows the stripe field to show again, but then the form totals are wrong because of the cache !
Hi TomazHurtz,
You’re right the cache buster interferes with the display of the credit card field. If you are a Gravity Perks customer with an Advanced or Pro license, drop us a line and we can look into adding support for this.
Best,
This looks really good.
The plugin download button doesn’t work though.
Please advise.
Hello Zunaid, Thank you for that report. Let me get a request in to get this resolved. In the mean time, you can add the snippet version to your themes functions.php file and see if that works for you. Will update when resolved. 😀
Hello Zunaid, Wanted to update you on this one as we have resolved this issue. Please go ahead and click the download button again and you should be all set. 😃
The Embed URL does not work there anymore -> Do you have a fix for this?
We’re replying to this via the support ticket.
Work Well! Just not working with a {embed_url} conformation redirect, it results in a blank page. Any workaround?
Thanks
Right, I’m aware of that, but are there some minimum requirements for PHP, for example, for this to be effective?
Hi Scot,
I just ran a version check, and this plugin shows no issues with PHP 5.6 or greater.
Are there any minimum requirements for this plugin, much like those listed for Fresh Forms?
Hey Scot, Please just confirm that you have Gravity Forms installed and activated and that you’ve installed and activated the plugin or cache buster code listed above.😃