Forms Stopped Working (URGENT)

Hi, I have emailed but have received no response, my plugin has stopped working, I contacted my site support and they have said it is a plugin issue / bug that needs to be fixed.

Please can you look into this and fix it asap? here are the findings from my chat with support below:

You – Hi, I’ve got an issue with a forms plugin, it was working fine and now when I try to edit or preview the form it says “there was a critical error on your website” could this be lack of memory? the plugin is formality forms
Amanda joined the chat
YouScreenshot 2025-06-25 191149.png

Amanda – Hey Brett! Thanks for this info, give me a few moments to review
YouScreenshot 2025-06-25 191222.png
YouScreenshot 2025-06-25 191304.png
You – happy to do a screen share to show the issue

Amanda – Thank you! Just checking in with the team on what could be happening here, give us a few minutes

You – thanks

Brent joined the chat

Brent – Hello Brett, stepping in here for Amanda to look into this for you. Give me just a minute or two to bring up your account.

You – okay thanks

Brent – Hi, the error that is being thrown is the following: [25-Jun-2025 18:12:09 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught ValueError: Unknown format specifier “<” in /chroot/home/ae4ed3e8/bcefbe37fe.nxcli.io/html/wp-content/plugins/formality/public/class-formality-fields.php:52 You can try to re-upload the plugin in case this file has become corrupted. If that does not work, I would reach out to Formality support with the full stack trace of the error, which I am attaching for you in a .txt file. They should be able to resolve this for you by providing the full error message in the attached file.stacktrace.txt

You – I have emailed them and got no response, i think its just 1 guy, I installed the plugin from the website plugin section, i have tried removing it and re-adding it but no joy, I’m really not good with website technical stuff (i was in IT support for years) is their anyway you guys can help? it was working absolutely fine, and out of the blue it just started throwing the error, why would it work fine then stop? i was building a form and i kept previewing it along the way and was fine then randomly stopped and started erroring on the preview and when saving the draftYouand if i create a new form it works again, it seems to be if a form gets too large? that’s why i suspected memory

Brent – The error being produced generally means that something is being passed to the code that it is not expecting or allowed. Since this is happening when you are trying to preview your form, it leads me to believe there is an issue with some of the information you have supplied in that specific form or that there is an actual bug with the plugin and the way that it accepts the form information for processing.

You – the thing is it’s not just the preview, it suddenly stops saving and throws the update failed error (in the screenshot above) it also no longer lets you edit the form because you get the “critical error screen appear”

You – I don’t understand why it would just stop, when it was fully functional up to that point, I’ didn’t do anything different, I’m just adding more fields etc..

You – that’s why i wondered if it was memory, as the form is getting larger so perhaps it ran out of memory

Brent– That would check out as well. When you save, edit or preview, what happens is that the code is either loaded up or sent to you or the server. During those processes, this line of code is called: return sprintf($wrap, $field); Sprintf expects precise information and if it receives something that it is not allowed to process, it will throw an error.BrentAll is good on your server as far as memory. This issue is strictly related to Formability and the specific code mentioned in the provided stacktrace. I can convert this chat to a ticket if you would like and do a bit further investigation, however I do believe this is a bug within the plugin that the author will need to address.