Bring the "live" experience of the big platforms to your self-hosted community — without paying for a cloud subscription. Realtime makes topics feel alive: new posts appear the instant they're written, members can see who's in the room, and a typing indicator lets conversations flow like chat. It all runs on your own server, with no third-party service in the loop.
Three features, one lightweight app
⚡ Live Topics — New replies and reactions arrive the moment they're posted. Instead of hammering refresh, members get a tasteful "3 new replies" bar that loads the latest with a tap.
👀 Real-Time Viewing — A live "…is also here" presence pill sits by the topic title, showing who else is reading this very second. It turns a quiet thread into a room.
⌨️ Real-Time Typing — When someone starts writing a reply, everyone else sees a subtle "…is typing" indicator. Fewer duplicate posts, and the natural rhythm people expect from modern chat.
Why members and admins love it
Instant, no refresh over a persistent WebSocket connection
Runs entirely on your infrastructure — no SaaS, no per-seat pricing, no data leaving your servers
Never gets in the way — if the service is down, the community keeps working; realtime just pauses
Upgrade-safe — listens to IPS content events, never edits core files
Light on resources — a tiny Node.js process handling thousands of concurrent readers
(Full version includes the "How it works", requirements, and "what's in the download" sections.)
What's New in Version 1.0.7
Released
1.0.7
New: live private messages. Realtime's three features now work inside private conversations as well as topics — new messages surface live, you can see who else is in the conversation, and the "…is typing" indicator shows when someone is writing. A conversation's live channel is joinable only by its participants: the connection token is signed for that exact channel, so a member can never listen in on a conversation they are not part of.
⚠ You must redeploy the gateway for this version. The connection token now also authorises which channel a page may join (this is what makes private messages safe). An older gateway will reject the new tokens and realtime will stop updating until it is redeployed. Replace the gateway's server.js with the one in this download and restart it — your RT_SECRET, .env and web-server route do not change. The community keeps working normally throughout; only the live updates pause.
- Live new-message bar, presence, and typing inside private conversations.
- Channel-signed connection tokens — private channels are joinable only by participants.
- The message body is never sent over the socket; the reader loads it through the normal, permission-checked page.
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