Set up Story: permissions, widgets and scheduled tasks
Stories stay invisible until members have permission to see and post them. What to grant, which widgets to add, and what the scheduled tasks do.
Updated 4 min read By the D.C Style team
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Story adds 24-hour stories to your forum: images, videos, text on a coloured background, and threads or posts shared into a story. The stories bar appears above your forum list as soon as the add-on is installed, but it stays empty until you give members permission to see and post stories. Story 2 needs XenForo 2.3. Version 1.0.4 was the last build for XenForo 2.2.
Grant the Stories permissions
Installing Story does not switch its permissions on for anyone, so this step comes first. Go to Groups & permissions > User group permissions, open the Registered group and find the Stories section. At a minimum, set these to Yes:
- Can view stories
- Can create stories
Then add what you want members to be able to do: Can create text-only stories, Can upload video stories, Add polls to stories, Vote in story polls, Can comment on stories, Can react to stories, Can set story privacy, Share discussions to stories and Can create highlight collections. Maximum stories per day limits how often each member can post.
For moderators, add Can delete any story, Can edit any story, Can pin stories, Can see who viewed stories, Can view hidden stories and Can view deleted stories.
If you give the Guests group Can view stories, guests can open a few stories before they are asked to register. Guest preview count in the options sets how many (3 by default). New to permissions? XenForo permissions explained.
Allow video stories
Video stories need two switches, not one: the Can upload video stories permission, and XenForo's own Allow video/audio uploads with maximum file size in Setup > Options > Attachments. If the XenForo option is off, members cannot post video stories whatever their permissions say.
Story's options add two limits of their own. Maximum story video duration (seconds) is 60 by default. Maximum story video size (KB) is 0, which means "use XenForo's limit". Duration is checked on the server for MP4, MOV and M4V files. For WebM and OGV only the size limit applies.
Settings worth checking
All the options are in Setup > Options > D.C Style - Story, split into tabs. The ones people ask about most:
| Option | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Story expiration (hours) | 24 | How long a story stays up. 0 means stories never expire. |
| Expired retention (days) | 30 | How long expired stories are kept before they are deleted for good. Stories in highlights are kept. |
| Default privacy | Public | The privacy new stories start with: Public, Members, Following or Only me. |
| Enable avatar story rings | On | Draws a ring around the avatars of members who have a story. |
| Auto-play duration (seconds) | 5 | How long each image or text story shows before the next. |
Comments, reactions, view tracking, polls, highlights, pinning and streaks each have their own on/off switch too.
Add the Story widgets
The stories bar above the forum list is added for you. For anywhere else, Story comes with four widgets: [D.C Style] Stories bar, [D.C Style] Recent stories, [D.C Style] Story of the day and [D.C Style] Top streakers. None of them is placed automatically. Add a widget and choose where it appears shows how.
What the scheduled tasks do
Stories expire, streaks update and Story of the Day is picked by four cron entries:
- DC/Story: Expire stories, every 15 minutes.
- DC/Story: Update streaks, daily at 02:00.
- DC/Story: Clean up expired stories, daily at 03:00.
- DC/Story: Story of the day, daily at 00:05.
If stories stay up past their time or streaks stop counting, XenForo's scheduled tasks are not running. Keep scheduled tasks running explains why and how to fix it.
Change the ring colours
The avatar rings use two style properties in the Avatars group: Unseen story ring color and Active story ring color. Change them per style so the rings match your theme. Change colours and sizes with style properties.
Release notes and the full feature list are on the Story page.
Still stuck? Open a support ticket with your XenForo version, the Story version and what a member sees (or doesn't) when they open the stories bar.