Right now…at this very minute…what do you think Brian Gardner is doing? And at the same moment, assuming he's not sipping some tea, what do you think Chris Brogan is doing? And I bet if you had a web cam on either Pippin Williamson or Brian Krogsgard right now, I know what they'd be doing.
Are you doing it?
Brian is cooking up new ways to make WordPress even more awesome with the Genesis Framework. Brogan is cooking up new content to help you be more human and have more influence. Pippin's coming up with ways to make his own, or your, plugins work better. Brian is thinking up ways to curate even more good WordPress stuff for you and me.
They're all adding value online … but they're doing one other thing as well. They're all coming up with ways to get better. Every. Single. Day.
Let's Talk about Gravity Forms
Now I know it's not Christmas, and I have no idea why the guys at at Rocket Genius (the guys behind Gravity Forms) would want to give you a present so early in the year. But I find it's better to just smile, grab it and run before they figure out what they've done.
When Carl Hancock sent me a tweet about the availability of an upcoming version of Gravity Forms (in the form of the 1.7 beta), I was excited. I'd already seen his tweets about some of what they were working on, but I had no idea.
But here's what I know about Carl and his friends at Rocket Genius: they're just like the other rockstars I listed above. It's the single reason why Gravity Forms is the best WordPress plugin ever. Strike that. Evah. You know the difference! It keeps improving.
Gravity Forms is the best WordPress plugin ever because it never stops getting better.
I've said it before…if you only had a few dollars to spend on your WordPress site – just buy the single license. It's more than a contact form plugin – and always has been. But now, it should be the single choice for every freelancer out there.
Yes, I just made that claim. And now I'm going to back it up. Actually, they're going to back me up.
First, let's back up a second. You know I say no a lot. Right? And I often say no using canned email templates. Well, I want you to imagine how much more productive I will be when 1.7 comes out. Take a look with me.
Conditional Responses Rock
That feature alone makes my case. They've upped their game significantly by adding this single feature. What it means is that I can adjust many of my canned email responses and turn them into conditional responses based on the data people place in my form. If there was a word bigger than “powerful” I would use it right now.
I drafted up a simple example (see above) without a manual (my regular test) and then checked it out. It worked exactly as I imagined. This is a feature I'd dreamed would some day arrive somewhere but had no clue that it would be in Gravity Forms, but it makes so much sense.
And you don't just have to use it to turn work away. Think about the potential of placing a link in that conditional response – so that certain end users get a link to a “part two” form, while others don't. I could go on, but there are two other features I want to share with you.
These guys are rocking the Conditionals
We all have had forms where we mark certain fields as “required.” But that doesn't stop us from getting bad data. The most common bad data I see is either “aaa” or “asdfg” – both of which suck. So the good guys at Gravity Forms have gone a step further, to make the form button only appear when certain logic plays out.
By the way, they also support text and/or graphic image buttons. But that's besides the point right here.
The point is that I can ask the form to watch for content in my forms and wait until it gets certain data before even displaying the “submit” button. Very cool. Now “aaa” and “asdfg” won't fly. I like that. I like it a lot.
And here's the other thing I really love…
Notifications for everyone!
In the past, Gravity Forms had this split between an admin and a user email. And sometimes it might be difficult to get notifications to do what I wanted. But all this changes in 1.7 – because they've stripped away the entire notion of admin emails and user emails. Instead, you can send an email to anyone, at any time.
The One Way to Earn My Continued Respect
I started by telling you that I knew what Brian Gardner, Chris Brogan, Pippin Williamson & Brian Krogsgard were up to – they were continually upping their game. Well, no surprise that Carl Hancock and everyone creating Gravity Forms are doing the same. It's the same thing that everyone I know and respect is doing. I could list out a whole bunch of names but you get the point. I'm not just a Gravity Forms fanboy. I'm a huge fan of high performers – people who step their game up continually and constantly deliver.
They don't sit back on the couch and look in the rear view mirror all day.
What about you? Are you working on improving your game? Oh, and it help that these guys are all adding incredible value in their own communities. Gravity Forms has been installed on over 550,000 sites. Talk about adding value (and making money while doing it). Are you adding that kind of value?
So if you let your subscription lapse, or if you were waiting until later to get your copy, don't wait any longer. Go get Gravity Forms today!