Direct Guide Direct: start here

[Gwendal]

Direct puts your forum in real time: replies appear while members read, lists and widgets stay fresh, alerts and staff counters move by themselves. This is where to ask about it, report a problem or suggest what comes next.

Set up in five minutes with a free Pusher app​

1. Install Direct. It installs turned off, so nothing changes for your members yet.
2. Create a Channels app at pusher.com. The free Sandbox plan is enough to start. Pick the cluster closest to your members.
3. Open App Keys in the Pusher dashboard and copy the app ID, key, secret and cluster.
4. Open Admin CP, Options, Direct. Paste the four values, leave the host and port empty, and save.
5. Press Send a test event. You should see the relay's answer with HTTP 200. If not, the page says what to check.
6. Turn on Enable live updates and save. Open a thread in two browsers and post a reply in one of them: it appears in the other.

Direct shares one connection with Messenger when both are installed: leave Relay on Automatic and skip steps 2 to 4.

Hosting your own relay with Soketi​

Soketi is a free server that speaks the same protocol. Run it on any VPS, give it an app ID, a key and a secret, and put it behind your domain with TLS. In Direct, set Relay to Always use the settings below, enter its public host name without http:// or wss://, its port and whether it uses TLS, then the app ID, key and secret from its configuration. Send a test event works the same way.

Guests​

By default guests poll: their pages stay up to date without opening any connection, so they never count against your relay plan. In Options, Direct, Guests, you can give them a live connection like members, or no updates at all.

The daily budget cap​

Direct estimates the messages it sends each day. Above the cap, pages switch to polling until midnight UTC, and the Admin CP page says so. The default of 100,000 is half of what Pusher's free plan allows per day; raise it if you pay for a bigger plan, or set 0 to turn it off. A quota refusal from the relay switches to polling in any case.

The dot stays grey: what to check​

The dot in the navigation is green when the page is live, and grey when it polls. Polling still updates the page, just less often. If it never turns green for a member:

• Enable live updates is on, and the member is logged in. Guests poll by default, so a guest sees a grey dot by design.
• Admin CP, Options, Direct: read the status line. It says if no relay is configured, if the breaker has paused publishing after relay failures, or if the daily cap is reached.
• Press Send a test event and read the hint: a refused signature means the key or secret is wrong, no answer means the host, port or TLS setting, or your server cannot reach the relay.
• On a self-hosted relay, check that browsers can open a WebSocket to its public host and port, and that the TLS setting matches how it is served.
• In the browser, an extension or a company network can block WebSockets. The page then keeps polling, which is expected.
• A tab left in the background disconnects after a few minutes and reconnects when it comes back.

What to post here​

• Found a bug? Start a thread with the Direct label, with your XenForo version, your relay (Pusher or self-hosted) and what you did.
• Have an idea or stuck somewhere? Same label, and tell us what you are trying to do.

Good to know​

Requires XenForo 2.3 and PHP 8.0 or later. Live mode needs a relay that speaks the Pusher protocol; without one, pages poll. Direct works on styles that keep XenForo's standard page structure. Resource Manager support is optional.