@Carl - Thanks for the explanation, I've just seen some really weird stuff out there is all. You are correct, I have no problem with callbacks for upgrades, and I do not remove that functionality from wp as it's convenient to know when an upgrade is available without having to visit the plugin site each day.

What I was describing was a theme I purchased that every time the admin page was loaded a callback was made to the theme's providers server, which went up n down all the time, resulting in the inability to edit the admin.... yeah some crazy stuff goes on out there.

Getting back to gravityforms:
One thing that is not clear to me is this.... Do the forms only work for the enduser or am I able to create forms for data input on the backend... think flutter/magic-fields/pods

I personally don't really have a use for enduser forms at the moment, but do have the need to create custom forms for my 'site admins' to use in order to create custom post content.. once again think flutter/magic-fields/pods

Example:
A site admin wants to create a 'sermon' post, so he needs input boxes for series/date/embed code/description/file uploads/etc
On the backend, each of those boxes uses a shortcode that I apply to a custom category template...

hope that makes sense...
(flutter/magic-fields/pods all seem to have their own issues in a wpmu environment, so I'm still hunting for the perfect solution)

sidenote so I don't sound like an idiot: I meant xss not css injection in earlier post LOL, typing to fast

btw... love the edit comment plugin