Cache Busting with Gravity Forms
Bypass WordPress caching plugins to ensure valid submissions.
March 14, 2023: Fixed an issue where some shortcode attributes were not passed to the gravity_form function.
December 21, 2023: Fixed issue where Gravity Forms' default script event was not triggered for forms that did not have Cache Buster enabled.
September 8, 2023: Fixed moderate security issue.
October 25, 2022: Added support for enabling Cache Buster globally with form-specific exclusions.
July 21, 2022: Added support for using Cache Buster with WPML!
April 20, 2022: Added support for using Cache Buster with Nested Forms!
November 23, 2021: Fixed an issue where Save & Continue links generated by a form using Cache Buster would not be correct.
April 27, 2021: Fixed an issue with GF 2.5 and default Checkbox fields values.
April 27, 2021: Fixed an issue where field values were not passed properly to Gravity Forms.
April 13, 2021: Fixed a compatibility issue with GPPA.
March 18, 2021: Fixed parsing of title and description boolean 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.
See our in-depth guide on Gravity Forms Shortcodes for more information on the shortcodes you might wish to utilise with Cache Buster as well as the other shortcode possibilities.
Static forms that don’t use dynamic features are safe to leave cached!
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 that is loaded via a shortcode. Forms loaded via the Gravity Forms Block or using the gravity_form() method will not be cache-busted. If you’d like support for this, let us know in the comments!
Known Limitations
- Cache Buster only works with forms loaded via the
[gravityforms]shortcode – even when thegfcb_enable_cache_busterfilter is used to apply to all forms. - 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.
- Cache Buster fetches the form markup via an AJAX request which WordPress considers an admin request. If you’re using a snippet manager plugin, ensure that your snippet is configured to output on both the frontend and admin.
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.
Had several reports that at least after the most recent GF update forms weren’t showing up on Firefox. Disabling the plugin seems to fix the issue.
Using WP Rocket and Cloudflare on the site.
Hi T,
I have been unable to reproduce this with the latest Gravity Forms, Cache Buster, and Firefox. If you’re a Gravity Perks customer, can you please open a support ticket so we can investigate this further?
thank you, that realy helped me with caching problem with gravity forms. Some times ago, a friend of mine told me some similar thing and now I am going to implement this on my own WordPress website to increase its speed and performance.
Hi Mike,
You’re welcome. Glad our solution has been useful to you.
Best,
Hi there (again),
Based on our research and testing, can you kindly add to your documentation (i.e., “Known Limitations”), the following:
“This plugin may not be compatible with third-party calendar plugins, such as gAppointments.” (or similar statement)
Thank you!
Hi again Jonathan,
I just tested the latest version of Cache Buster (0.6) with the latest version of gAppointments (1.14.1) and have been unable to reproduce the issue you described in a previous comment. Here’s a screenshot of the form when used with Cache Buster.
It sounds like there might be something else at play, such as another plugin, the theme, or some additional code on the site that is causing the issue. I think your issue will need more troubleshooting, which we’re happy to offer once you purchase an Advanced or Pro license.
Hi Scott,
Thank you. Well, that’s mindboggling. We also used the same plugin versions, disabled everything (minus essentials for Cache Buster) and still couldn’t get gAppointments to load properly.
The console error we’re getting is: “Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘addEventListener’)”
Details: https://prnt.sc/jz49gMtHxsSw
Oh well, we’ll keep working on this offline and present our solution once found. Apologies, everything works great at our end except this, so can’t justify purchasing the Advanced or Pro licenses, only Basic.
Thank you,
PS: Still not getting any “followup comments by email” notices. Checked everywhere, including spam folders.
Hi there,
Is your plugin compatible with both Paypal and Stripe? (natively and/or via your plugin add-ons)
Previous comments suggested the same question, but did not find an answer.
If not compatible, can you kindly add that to your documenation? (i.e., “Know Limitations”). If compatible, can you indicate that in your documentation as well?
Thank you!
Hi Jonathan,
The cache buster is compatible with the payment addons. This was an issue in the past, but it was fixed some versions ago. This was even mentioned in one of the comments by another user. If it isn’t working for you, then this issue is specific to your website setup, and we’ll need to dig further into the issue on your website, which goes beyond the support we offer for free plugins. As mentioned earlier, we’re willing to dig further into issues specific to users, if you purchase a license.
Best,
Thanks, Samuel. That comment only addressed Stripe, not Paypal. So, is your plugin also compatible with Gravity Forms Paypal add-on? (just confirming). By the way, appreciate all the replies given here!
Note: Your “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” (checkbox) feature does not appear to be working. I always have to visit this site to check the latest answers. Also checked my spam folder, nothing there. You may want to check the feature at your end. No biggie. Cheers.
Hi Jonathan,
I can confirm that the latest version of the plugin is compatible with PayPal.
I’ll look into the issue with the comment notifications. Thanks for letting us know.
I’m having an issue. If I use the cachebuster on a form the title of the form always appears even in the shortcode has title=”false”.
Hi Daniel,
I was able to recreate this issue with the latest version of the cache buster plugin. I’ll forward this over to our developers to look into it. Please expect additional reply to this comment with update on the issue.
Best.
Hi Samuel,
Glad you were able to replicate the issue. That’s one of several we ran into when using Version 0.4 or 0.5 of your plugin. Specifically, this is what your plugin did to our form(s):
(1) The Form title reappears * (2) The Form required legend appears * (3) The Form’s field validation error messages return to their natural state * (4) The form button (“SEND”) goes back to its natural state. That is, when we click “SEND” it does not recognize our custom PHP code forcing the button to say “Processing …” when clicked.
Our troubleshooting included everything! (including disabling all plugins, disconnecting from all third-party sources, and clearing all cache)
Specifics:
Without Cache Buster: (GOOD)
https://prnt.sc/OdARwg0FRd2h https://prnt.sc/9BrOZd_mpNZ4 https://prnt.sc/RU-srdZImgbf
With Cache Buster: (BAD)
https://prnt.sc/FV82S-kL1kjq https://prnt.sc/N1tE4c5seKTx
Help appreciated. Glad to renew our license if this can be fixed.
Thank you!
Hi Jonathan,
Aside from the first issue with the form title reappearing, which I have been able to recreate, I am unable to recreate the second and third issues. It works the same with or without the cache buster plugin. The fourth issue has to do with a custom code you’re using, so I wasn’t able to test that to recreate it. Also, although we’re ready to fix any issue related to the cache buster plugin, adding support for custom codes will require you to purchase a license first before we dig into it.
That said, with regard to the first issue, can you try this updated version of the snippet and see if it fixes that issue? Also, if you are not already using it, you may also want to use our free Code Chest plugin to add your custom CSS to the form and see if it helps.
Best,
Hi Samuel,
Thank you. Unfortunately, when I click your link (updated version of the snippet), I get this: https://prnt.sc/6_ycZv1rgAlq
Can you repost a valid link or share the code via GitHub?
We’ll renew our license and reach out to support as soon as we test your updated snippet.
Thank you!
Sorry about that. Please try the link again.
Hi Samuel,
Thanks for the updated code snippet. Yes, it works. We also managed to solve the other issues by going back to our custom code snippets and changing their behavior from “Only run on site front-end” to “Run snippet everywhere.” Details: https://prnt.sc/hwSRkH2O809H.
So, it appears custom PHP code has to run both in the backend and frontend when the Cache Busting plugin is installed and activated.
Last, after fixing the above, we noticed that your plugin currently is not compatible with the plugin, gAppointments, which we are using and is embedded inside one of our Gravity Forms.
Specifically, with Cache Busting installed and activated, our gAppointments input fields and calendar disappear. Details (Without Cache Busting): https://prnt.sc/hcqlz7EF2SsC Details (With Cache Busting Activated): https://prnt.sc/6rGQfYHassFp
Yes, we did lots of troubleshooting on this too.
Since you guys seem to be familiar with gAppointments (Reference: Gravity View, Revision 2.9.0.1, dated July 23, 2020 or https://www.gravitykit.com/products/gravityview/#changelog), can you guys see if a fix can be provided for this conflict?
Meanwhile, we’ll renew our Gravity Perks license in the next day or two.
Thank you!
That makes sense that your snippets set to run on the frontend only weren’t working as Cache Buster fetches the Gravity Forms markup via an AJAX request which is considered an admin request by WordPress. We’ll add a tip to the article to hopefully save other users some time on this point.
Go ahead and pick up that license (make sure it’s Advanced or Pro which include snippet support) and submit a support request for the gAppointments conflict. We can’t guarantee support between the two but we’ll do our due diligence.
Hi David,
Thank you for the quick reply. Glad we could help too.
Concerning the license type, we cannot justify purchasing the Advanced or Pro plan at this time – only Basic.
Since support is not provided for the Basic plan nor there’s a guarantee you can help with gAppointments, we’ll need to pass for now.
We’ll let your developers address the conflict as other Advanced or Pro users report the same issue over time. If we come up with a fix at our end, we’ll share it with you via another comment and email. No charge :)
Thank you for your time and effort!
Sounds like a plan! Thank you. 🙂
Unfortunately, your plugin breaks (i.e., overrides) all custom CSS and PHP code we have assigned to our forms. You plugin takes us back to the native configuration of our forms.
Hi Jonathan,
I’m having some trouble replicating this issue locally. All custom CSS, JS, and PHP is being applied to my forms when testing. I suggest running a theme/plugin conflict test to see if there’s some other code on the site that is interfering with the Cache Buster.
Hi Scott,
Thank you. In addition to many other tests, we ran the tests per your suggestion (using jQuery, not Vanilla). Issues remain. We sent details — offline — to David Smith. If helpful, you can update this topic entry if and when the issue is confirmed and solved. Again, thank you.
Hello, Today, I encountered a challenging situation on Upwork. A client gave me a 1-star rating and an unfavorable review due to issues with the Gravity Form not meeting their expectations. I made efforts to explain that the problem wasn’t my fault. I even utilized JavaScript to prevent an unintended auto-scrolling effect upon form submission. Initially, this approach was successful. However, the client later reported that the forms weren’t displaying up-to-date data. Consequently, I decided to install a plugin to address this issue, which unfortunately led to the form reverting to its auto-scrolling behavior.
I believe it’s crucial to address this matter to prevent other freelancers from facing similar negative experiences in the future. The plugin’s presence seems to interfere with various filters, such as:
Hi Rajon,
We’ll need you to submit a support ticket for this, so our developers can look into the issue. If you have an active Gravity Perks license, please submit the support ticket, so we can look into this further.
Best,
We installed this and it seemed to work, then a majority of our forms disappeared the next day. We disabled the plugin and they immediatly came back. None of the forms that dissappeared were using your shortcode parameter cachebuster=”1″ they were standard gravity form shortcodes.
We’re using WP Rocket with WP Engine hosting. All plugins and WordPress up to date. I’m going to try to test this on a staging server to see if I can reproduce it but have you seen this before? Any ideas? We can’t use the plugin on our site so once I get a staging server setup I’ll try again and send a link.
Hey Mark, we’ve seen one other report of this but that user wasn’t able to recreate it either. Please do get that staging site setup and and let me know if it happens again. We’ll be happy to dig in.
Hi there, this plugin does not work correctly with the {embed_url} merge tag (returns admin-ajax in the tag). Is there a workaround for this?
Hi Marian,
When testing locally, it works as expected. We’ll have to take a look at your setup to be able to assist you. If you have an active Gravity Perks license, you can get in touch with us via our support form.
Cheers,
Hello there
After lots of conflict testing, I’ve discovered that this prevents PayPal working well. At the moment when users complete payment, they cannot be redirected to my site because I use the code below: “add_filter( ‘gfcb_enable_cache_buster’, ‘__return_true’ );”
It is very useful being able to apply this to all forms, I have 200+. Please can you let me know how I can apply to all and also exclude form 285 and form 77? Thanks!
Danny
Hi Danny,
This will require some customization to the snippet. However, can you try and download the latest version of the Plugin above and see if it resolves the issue? If that doesn’t help, then we’ll need you to submit a support ticket. If you have an active Pro Gravity Perks license, you can get in touch with us via the support form so we can forward your request to our developers to see if support for using Paypal can be added.
Best,
Hi Gravity Wiz
Love your work.
Is there a way of adding the loader to non-busted forms for visual consistency?
Best,
Hi,
I’m guessing this should be possible with some custom codes. If you have an active Gravity Perks Pro License, you can get in touch with us via our support form so we can assist you further.
Best,
Hi, I am using gravity nested form. The problem is that I put a field for dynamic evaluation. If I change the value of that field and the user form is not sent, the new value will not replace the previous one and they can abuse this.
Hi Sina,
This isn’t a known issue. We’ll need to dig into this further to determine what’s happening. If you have an active Gravity Perks license, can you get in touch with us via our support form, so we can take a closer look at your setup. In the meantime you may want to check if you’re using the latest version of the Caching buster plugin, and if not you can download the latest version here and update it.
Best,
Samuel in support helped me today with the Cache Buster, he said the developers have resolved the issue with Stripe in the latest version of the plugin. I tested it on a form that uses the Stripe addon and it worked fine in test mode. So may be worth revisiting for those who tried it before. It took 3 seconds off the page load time for me when I was able to use Varnish again. I previously could not have Varnish on the page (had used an exclusion rule) as it was stopping the child form from submitting to the parent form.
Hi Denis,
Thanks for testing this and sharing how it worked for you here.
Best
Hi We have embed the form in a post and in the form we have two hidden fields with the following default value: {embed_post:post_title} {custom_field:crm_course} The problem is that if we activate Cache Busting the value for these two hidden fields is empty, so the form doesn’t get the values from the post. Please have you any idea about the reason of this issue? Thanks
Hi Fabrizio,
I’m not really sure what’s happening but if you have an active Gravity Perks License, you can get in touch with us via our support form and we’ll be happy to dig into this furhter.
Best,
Great plug-in although it just spins when I upgrade my site from php7.4 to 8.0
https://elitedancestudio.org/drop-class/
Hi Jocelyn,
When testing locally it seems to work as expected in PHP 8.0. You can run a conflict test to check if any other plugins are conflicting with Gravity Forms. If not and if you have any further questions and you have an active license, you can get in touch with us via our support form. to dig into this.
Best,
I have realised this also doesnt work with paypal checkout aswell as stripe. I know you have messaged people saying send in a ticket. I dont mind paying for gravity perks to get this fixed but I want to know if you can get this to work on stripe and/or paypal first thankyou.
Hi Lewis,
From what I understand this is a limitation from Gravity Forms, caching, and how Payment gateways handle the data. I can confirm this can be fixed. We need to dig into each issue as an individual case.
Best,
Hello did you fix the issue with the gravityforms stripe addon? I thought id found the answer to my problems but stripe isnt working :-(
Hi Lewis,
If Cache Buster won’t work for you, I would suggest trying Fresh Forms for Gravity Forms.
Best,
Is there anyway for the ajax loader to loop, my form is quite large and takes a while to load on the page, the ajax loader doesnt loop so it looks like the page is blank.
Hi Lewis,
This will require some digging. If you have a Gravity Perks license, reach out via the support form so we can assist you further with this.
Best,
I’m not seeing any info about how to implement cache busting on a form that is embedded on the page via the Gravity Forms BLOCK versus a shortcode. Is there a way to do this when forms are put on the page with the block?
Also, I see where other people had issues with the Stripe add-on as we did. Is there any info about that you can provide other than asking us to submit a support ticket?
Hi Bet,
If you want to use Cache Buster with the Block Editor you will enable it for all forms in the site with this filter: https://gravitywiz.com/cache-busting-with-gravity-forms/comment-page-1/#apply-to-all-forms
About the Stripe question, you’re right the cache buster interferes with the display of the credit card field. We’ve followed up via email.
Best,
Hi my form has an hidden field that is populated with the value of a post Custom Field. With Gravity Forms Cache Buster active, the form doesn’t get the value of Custom Field in the post. Any suggestion? Thanks Fabrizio
Hi Fabrizo,
We’ll have to dig into this further to determine what’s happening. If you have an active Gravity Perks License, you can get in touch with us via our support form with an export of the form so we run some tests with it on our end.
Best,
Hi, I use Gravity Flow to enable the user to return to a partially filled in form (Gravity Forms Partial Entries) but if the user is not logged in, the form is not filled in when they return to it. If I use your plugin, the form is filled in (great, thankyou!). However, if I have your plugin installed, it interferes with the Gravity Flow reminder notifications for partially filled in forms (I can live with this as I have a work around in place for now) and more seriously it prevents the form from submitting correctly for Android users. The form actually submits but the user is not taken to the thank you page and form appears to endlessly load. This is causing great concern to our customers and they are trying to submit multiple applications as a result. I have reached out to Gravity Flow support to see if they can help with regards to the caching – but no luck as you can imagine. Can you please help?
Hi Melissa,
Unfortunately, we can’t really tell why this is happening without troubleshooting this further. If you have an active Gravity Perks license, you can get in touch with us with your account email address via our support form so we can dig into this issue. For now, I will suggest you run a conflict test to check if another plugin may be causing this. Here are instructions for how to run a theme/plugin conflict test:
https://gravitywiz.com/documentation/help-us-help-you/#2-run-a-theme-plugin-conflict-test
Best,
I noticed an incompatibility/bug with WPML. When using this plugin, WPML cannot update language in form on first pageview after language change. Needs a page refresh before form content is purged.
Hi Jesper,
If you have an active Gravity Perks License, you can get in touch with us via our support form with your account email address and we’ll be happy to dig into this further.
Best,
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.😃