How to stop Akismet blocking Gravity Forms entries

It seems that Akismet sometimes flags Gravity Forms entries as spam and as a result its blocking them. This conflict can make your WordPress Gravity Forms miss a lot of entries and inquiries because you never receive the email notifications about them unless you go and manually check the Gravity Form entries from your WordPress Dashboard.

In this case, there is not a lot you can do to bypass the conflict; you can disable Akismet or you can apply the following Gravity Forms filter and bypass Akismet to all or some of your Gravity Forms.

 

Fixing Akismet blocking Gravity Forms conflict

Step 1: Backup your active theme files

Create a backup of your active theme functions.php file

Step 2: Add a code snippet to block Akismet from Gravity Forms

Open your active theme functions.php file with your favourite editor and add the following code if you want to globally disable Akismet from your Gravity Forms:

add_filter( 'gform_akismet_enabled', '__return_false' );


If you want to disable Akismet for a specific form then write down the Gravity Forms id(for example: 1) and use it in the following code snippet:

add_filter( 'gform_akismet_enabled_1', '__return_false' );


Step 3: Save and test

Save your functions.php and test your form by reloading on of your Gravity Form pages and by submitting a test entry. Then check if you received the email notification which is triggered by Gravity Form once an entry has been recorded.

Extra Tip

Editing your active theme files is not safe for beginners, that’s why you always need to create a theme backup before trying any such hack. If you don’t want to get your hands dirty then I strongly suggest using a plugin which will do the job for you.
For example, you can install and activate My Custom Functions WordPress plugin and add the code snippets I wrote about above.