DirectXenForo add-on

A forum page is a snapshot. Someone answers while you read and you only find out when you press refresh, sometimes after posting the same answer yourself. Alerts wait for the next click, the staff bar is already out of date, and the conversation feels slower than the chat apps on your members' phones. Direct puts your forum in real time, on the pages your members already use.

What your members see​

A reply lands under the one they are reading, highlighted for a moment. If they have scrolled up, a "1 new reply" button waits instead of moving the page. Edits, reactions and moderation show up in place. Above the thread, Here right now shows who else has it open, and a line says who is typing.

Everywhere else the forum keeps itself fresh: new threads at the top of forum lists, What's new and latest activity, sidebar widgets, members online and profile posts. Alert and conversation counters move by themselves, with a small notification in the corner that each member can turn off. Your staff watch the approval queue and the report counter change as it happens. With Resource Manager installed, new resources, updates and reviews appear live on resource pages and lists too.

Built to stay safe​

• Polling fallback. With no relay, or while the relay is down, pages poll on their own and return to live when it answers again. A dot in the navigation tells members which mode they are in.
• A daily budget cap. Direct estimates the messages it sends and switches pages to polling until midnight UTC before your relay plan runs out. A quota refusal from the relay does the same.
• A circuit breaker. After three relay failures in a row it stops publishing for five minutes while pages poll, then tries again by itself.
• Permission checks on every channel. Every channel is private, and your server signs each subscription only after XenForo's own permission check. A live event carries an ID, not content: the page then loads what changed through XenForo, with the reader's own permissions.
• Invisible members stay invisible. Members who hide their online status are counted as guests in Here right now.
• Light on your plan. Guests poll by default, a tab left in the background disconnects after a few minutes and catches up when it comes back, and live refreshes are not counted as views.

Set up in minutes​

Create a free Pusher Channels app, or point Direct at your own Soketi server, paste the keys into one Admin CP page and press Send a test event. The page shows the relay's answer and what to check if it refuses. It also tells you whether you are live, which relay is in use, the messages estimated today and the state of the breaker. The secret is never shown again once saved.

Direct shares one connection with Messenger when both are installed. Everything is built from XenForo's own components: it follows your style in light and dark, stops its animations for members who ask for reduced motion, and leaves a page untouched wherever a style lacks the element it would update.

Good to know​

Live mode needs a relay that speaks the Pusher protocol. Pusher's free plan is enough for most forums, and Soketi is free if you host it yourself. Without a relay Direct still keeps pages fresh, by polling. Guests use polling by default; you can give them a live connection or nothing at all.

Direct works on styles that keep XenForo's standard page structure. On a heavily rebuilt style, an area it cannot find simply stays as it is.

Requires XenForo 2.3 and PHP 8.0 or later. Built and tested on XenForo 2.3.13 with PHP 8.3, and run on 2.3.11. Resource Manager support is optional and stays out of the way when Resource Manager is not installed. Direct has kept this forum live since October.