Accessing the settings

You’ll find the settings at WPdirectdebit → Settings. Go over the settings before you build any forms — so connection, webhooks, and defaults are already in place when you start testing.

Setting are organised in sections – click on a section name to reveal the settings for each section.

Most fields have a tooltip (ⓘ) right next to them with the details. This guide gives you the bigger picture and a few things that are easy to miss, but be sure to read the tooltips.

GoCardless provides a Sandbox mode and a Live mode. Test the full flow in Sandbox before switching to Live: submit the form, complete the GoCardless flow, wait for the webhook to arrive, and check the mandate, payment, or subscription are correctly set up. In Gravity Forms, look at the form entry and check for any errors added to the notes for that entry. If you encounter any problems you can’t solve, get in touch via our post-sales support form.

When you do switch to Live, the plugin will ask you to add a dedicated WPDIRECTDEBIT_SALT line to wp-config.php — this keeps your live credentials encrypted separately from sandbox. It’ll generate the exact line for you; just paste it in and reload the page. It’s a two-minute job, so it’s worth doing ahead of your go-live date rather than in the middle of it. You’ll need access to your web server for this – again, if that poses a problem for you, let us know and we’ll do our best to guide you.

One thing to note: if you ever change or lose that salt, anything encrypted with it (webhook secrets, tokens) becomes unreadable, and you’ll need to reconnect and re-enter those values. Not a disaster, just good to know in advance.

Live and Sandbox each connect separately via OAuth, so you’ll authorise both individually. The LIVE/SANDBOX toggle at the top of the page decides which one is active for the site right now — everything else on this page reflects whichever mode is selected.

WPdirectdebit V4 makes use of webhooks – earlier versions did not, so if you are upgrading from V3 then this is something new that you need to do. Each connection mode has its own webhook secret, so make sure you copy the Live secret into the Live field and the Sandbox secret into the Sandbox field — the tooltip explains where to find each one in your GoCardless dashboard.

These cover defaults like country, transaction limits, mandate verification, purpose codes, and per-scheme payment references. The tooltips go into the plan and scheme restrictions for each one, so it’s worth hovering over the ⓘ if anything looks unfamiliar. For most UK/EU sites, the defaults are a sensible starting point — you can always come back and adjust individual fields later. If in doubt, ask your GoCardless support rep for advice here.

Turning on debug logging adds extra diagnostic notes to your form entries, which is handy while you’re testing but not necessary for everyday use. Recommendation: Turn this on while you’re setting things up, snf st sny time you need to troubleshoot – otherwise set to off.

If enabled, this keeps a monthly CSV record of every pause, resume, cancellation, and amendment to a recurring payment — useful if you need a compliance or financial record-keeping trail. It’s off by default, so turn it on if you want to make use of it.

If you need to style any WPdirectdebit elements you can add your custom CSS here.

Select your uninstallation options here.