---
title: How Gravity Forms Integration Works
description: "GravityOps Forum is built on top of Gravity Forms, leveraging its powerful form creation and entry management capabilities to power a full-featured forum. This integration ensures a robust and familiar environment for developers and users. ## The Gravity Forms Engine…"
url: "https://brightleafdigital.io/docs/how-gravity-forms-integration-works/"
updated: "2026-10-18"
category: GravityOps Forum / Explanations Concepts Gravityops Forum
---

# How Gravity Forms Integration Works

GravityOps Forum is built on top of Gravity Forms, leveraging its powerful form creation and entry management capabilities to power a full-featured forum. This integration ensures a robust and familiar environment for developers and users.

## The Gravity Forms Engine

The plugin uses Gravity Forms to handle the submission and storage of all forum content.

- **Topic Submission**: When a user creates a new topic, they are submitting a standard Gravity Form configured as a "Topic Form."
- **Reply Submission**: When a user posts a reply, they are submitting a standard Gravity Form configured as a "Reply Form."
- **Login & Registration**: The plugin utilizes mapped Gravity Forms to handle WordPress authentication and user creation.
- **Data Storage**: Every topic and reply is a standard Gravity Forms entry.

## Mapping and Logic

The core logic of the plugin is centered on mapping:

1. **Form Assignment**: In the **Forms** tab of the plugin settings, you assign specific Gravity Forms to serve as "Topics" and "Replies." You can assign these globally or on a per-forum basis.
2. **Field Mapping**: For each assigned form, you tell the plugin which fields correspond to forum data:
   - **Topic Form Mapping**: Maps fields for the Topic Title, Topic Content, Topic Tags, and optional **Additional Fields**.
   - **Reply Form Mapping**: Maps fields for the Reply Content and optional **Additional Fields**.
   - **Login & Registration Mapping**: Maps fields to WordPress credentials and user profile data (Email, Password, Nickname, etc.).

## Entry Meta and Organization

To organize these entries into a cohesive forum, the plugin uses Gravity Forms Entry Meta. When a form is submitted, the plugin automatically attaches the following metadata to the entry:

- `gofrm_is_topic`: Identifies an entry as a forum topic.
- `gofrm_is_post`: Identifies an entry as a forum reply.
- `gofrm_forum_id`: The ID of the forum where the topic or reply was posted.
- `gofrm_topic_id`: (For replies) The ID of the parent topic entry.
- `gofrm_tag`: (For topics) Stores the tags assigned to the topic from the mapped field.
- Reply totals are calculated dynamically from active reply entries at query/render time.
- `gofrm_last_post_at`: (For topics) The MySQL timestamp of the most recent activity (topic creation or last reply).
- `gofrm_is_sticky`: (For topics) Indicates if the topic is pinned to the top.
- `gofrm_is_locked`: (For topics) Indicates if further replies are disallowed.
- `gofrm_locked_by_moderator`: (For topics) Indicates if the topic was locked specifically by a moderator.
- `gofrm_view_count`: (For topics) Stores the number of times the topic has been viewed.

## Benefits of This Integration

- **Customization**: You can add any custom fields (e.g., "Category," "Priority," "Attachments") to your Topic and Reply forms using the standard Gravity Forms editor.
- **Validation and Processing**: All standard Gravity Forms features, such as conditional logic, validation rules, and notifications, work seamlessly with your forum.
- **Data Portability**: Since forum content consists of standard entries, you can use existing Gravity Forms add-ons and tools (like GravityView or entry export) to interact with your forum data.