WordPress Fatal Error Gravity Forms with User Registration Add-On

There was a minor update ( I am talking 2.10.0 to 2.10.1 ) for Gravity Forms which included a ‘security enhancement‘ which I implemented.

Upon doing so my WordPress based membership site, which was using the Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On completely crashed with a Fatal Error and Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue notice.

No big deal I thought, I would just restore the backup from the day prior. Same result, so I continued restoring older daily backups without success. Now what!?

This article covers how I was able to resolve that Fatal Error but is intended for my personal use only in order to help me jog my memory should this issue occur in the future. So I won’t be going into great detail.

 

Fatal Error Gravity Forms with User Registration Add-On

Like I was saying, I initiated a simple and minor update to the Gravity Forms plugin on my membership based site which then triggered an on screen Fatal Error notice. As with any such instance, the WordPress system transmits the following email notice to the sites’ administrator:

 

Your Site is Experiencing a Technical Issue

Howdy!

WordPress has a built-in feature that detects when a plugin or theme causes a fatal error on your site, and notifies you with this automated email.

In this case, WordPress caught an error with one of your plugins, Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On.

First, visit your website and check for any visible issues. Next, visit the page where the error was caught (https://site.com/wp-admin/update.php?action=activate-plugin&networkwide&plugin=gravityforms%2Fgravityforms.php) and check for any visible issues.

Please contact your host for assistance with investigating this issue further.

If your site appears broken and you can’t access your dashboard normally, WordPress now has a special “recovery mode”. This lets you safely login to your dashboard and investigate further.

wp-login.php/?action=enter_recovery_mode&rm_token=AAAAA&rm_key=AAAAA

To keep your site safe, this link will expire in 1 day. Don’t worry about that, though: a new link will be emailed to you if the error occurs again after it expires.

When seeking help with this issue, you may be asked for some of the following information:

• WordPress version 6.9.4
• Active theme: Avada Child (version 1.0.0)
• Current plugin: Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On (version 5.4.0)
• PHP version 8.2.30

Error Details

=============
An error of type E_ERROR was caused in line 75 of the file /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/gravityformsuserregistration/userregistration.php. Error message: Uncaught Error: Class “GF_User_Registration” not found in /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/gravityformsuserregistration/userregistration.php:75
Stack trace:
#0 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-content/themes/Avada/includes/class-avada-init.php(469): gf_user_registration()
#1 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(341): Avada_Init->change_gravity_user_registration_priority(”)
#2 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(365): WP_Hook->apply_filters(NULL, Array)
#3 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php(522): WP_Hook->do_action(Array)
#4 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-settings.php(742): do_action(‘init’)
#5 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-config.php(103): require_once(‘/home/customer/...’)
#6 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-load.php(50): require_once(‘/home/customer/...’)
#7 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-admin/admin.php(35): require_once(‘/home/customer/...’)
#8 /home/customer/www/site.com/public_html/wp-admin/update.php(16): require_once(‘/home/customer/...’)
#9 {main}
thrown

 

Fatal Error Solution

Long story short, after the minor update the site simply failed to automagically re-activate the Gravity Forms plugin.

But you can’t reactive the Gravity Forms plugin because you can’t access the backend due to the Fatal Error caused by the deactivated Gravity Forms plugin.

What I did to bypass that limitation was to navigate to the plugins folder for the site (wp-content/plugins/) and rename the gravityformsuserregistration plugin to _gravityformsuserregistration (underscore added to beginning of filename)

Doing so restored access to the backend of the website which then allowed me to visit the Plugins menu so that I could manually re-activate the Gravity Forms plugin.

With the Gravity Forms plugin now activated, I went back to the plugins folder (wp-content/plugins/) and removed the underscore ( _ ) I had added to the beginning of the name for the gravityformsuserregistration plugin.

Once done, I went back to the website’s Plugins menu so that I could activate the Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On plugin. After which the site was fully operational again. Crazy, right!

 

Conclusion

I welcome your thoughts, questions or suggestions on my article on restoring a site suffering from a WordPress Fatal Error when using Gravity Forms with the User Registration Add-On.

You may support my work by sending me a tip using your Brave browser or by sending me a one time donation using your credit card.

Let me know if you found any errors within my article or if I may further assist you by answering any additional questions you may have.