Panel Frame Source

Panel Frame Source is a setting on your PMSS user panel that decides where the panel's navigation — the tabs for rTorrent, Deluge, qBittorrent, rclone, and similar — gets its layout from: fetched live from Pulsed Media, or bundled with the PMSS version on your server.

How it works

On every panel load, PMSS normally fetches the current navigation layout from pulsedmedia.com/remote/guiFrames.php. This is remote mode, the default. It lets Pulsed Media roll out a new tab, an updated link, or a navigation fix to every account immediately, without waiting for your server's own software to update.

Switching to local mode stops that request. Your panel falls back to the frame layout shipped with the PMSS version currently installed on your server, and picks up navigation changes only the next time your server runs a PMSS update — not the moment Pulsed Media ships them.

The request itself is anonymous: a static URL with no account, username, or service identifier attached, sent with a generic PMSS-GUI user agent and a 5 second timeout. This setting only controls the navigation/frame layer — other panel content (announcements, welcome-page banners) is unaffected and may still reach Pulsed Media's servers either way.

Pros and cons

Both modes are safe, supported choices. The trade-off is really just live navigation updates versus a fully self-contained panel.

Remote (default)

Pro: navigation updates — new tabs, fixed links, feature rollouts — reach your panel immediately, without waiting for your server's next PMSS update.
Con: one outbound HTTPS request from your panel to pulsedmedia.com on each page load. The request is anonymous (static URL, generic user agent, 5 second timeout, no account data), but your panel is running navigation delivered live from Pulsed Media on each load rather than only what shipped with your server.

Local

Pro: zero outbound request per panel load — the panel is fully self-contained, with nothing external in the loop when you open it.
Con: navigation only refreshes when your server picks up its next PMSS update, so it can sit slightly stale between updates.

Two things that are not differentiators, despite sounding like they might be:

Reliability — the same either way. Even in remote mode, if the fetch to Pulsed Media ever fails for any reason (timeout, network issue, outage), your panel automatically and silently falls back to the exact same local layout for that load. Choosing local permanently does not protect you from anything remote mode is not already protected against — that fallback is built in regardless of your setting.
Performance / load time — negligible for almost everyone. It is one small, fast request to a static URL with a 5 second timeout ceiling. If your server happens to have poor connectivity specifically to Pulsed Media's network, local would shave off that latency; otherwise you will not notice a difference.

Which should I choose?

For most accounts, leave it on the default (remote): you get navigation fixes and new features automatically, and the single outbound request is anonymous and cheap. Choose local if you specifically prefer that your panel not make any outbound call when you open it — a reasonable self-containment preference — and you do not mind navigation updates arriving only with your next server PMSS update.

How to tell which mode you are on

Your current preference is shown by the "Panel frame source" button on your account welcome page. The button offers the other mode: if it reads "Use local frame definitions", you are currently on remote; if it reads "Use remote-updated frames", you are currently on local.

Note that the automatic per-load fallback described above is not separately displayed. If you are on remote and a single page load's fetch fails, that one load quietly uses the local layout, but the button still reflects your saved preference (remote) — there is no separate indicator that a fallback happened on any given load.

How to change it

On your account welcome page (https://SERVER/user-USERNAME/), under account services, there is a "Panel frame source" button. It toggles between "Use remote-updated frames" and "Use local frame definitions" and takes effect on the next panel reload.

At Pulsed Media

Remote frame delivery is how PMSS keeps every customer panel in sync with the latest navigation fleet-wide, without requiring a server-side update first. Local frames are the built-in fallback that remote mode drops to automatically whenever the live fetch is unavailable; local mode simply makes that same local layout your permanent, deliberate choice.