Our Timeline
The Directus Story
Directus was created in 2004, a decade before the term "headless CMS" started trending. We've spent that time iterating through versions, carefully crafting an ideal user experience, and honing in on the perfect data platform.
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2004 — The initial concept of database-mirroring
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In the early 2000's Ben Haynes was working on client work for his agency, trying desperately to avoid building websites with WordPress. Preferring to work directly with the database, it was then that he had the idea to recreate phpMyAdmin as a safer and more intuitive CMS. The first five versions of Directus were designed and developed solely by Ben, with v1 created in Flash/Actionscript, and subsequent versions in PHP. The code was mostly 🍝, but the unique concept of mirroring the database was established.
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2011 — Backed by a dedicated team of full-time developers
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As the agency grew, and was formalized as
RANGER Studio, a full team of developers were assigned to the Directus project. Together, they took the core concept and general UX of previous iterations, and began to coalesce the first proper version of the platform.
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2012 — Officially released as open-source, GPLv3
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Directus 6 was completely rebuilt by the staff at RANGER, with Olov Sundström taking on the role of technical lead. The API was developed in PHP, using the Zend library for database abstraction. The App (not yet fully decoupled) was written in Backbone.js.
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2013 — Directus selected to power the SoulCycle ecosystem
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Soon after the production release of version 6, Directus was chosen to power SoulCycle's premiere data and content ecosystem. This included their e-commerce website, native app, kiosks, point-of-sale, bike maintenance, class scheduling, financial reporting, and more. The database-first approach of Directus made it the only viable tool for supporting SoulCycle's digital experiences during their explosive growth.
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2015 — A landslide of mergers and acquisitions
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After a few more years of product iteration, RANGER Studio, the managing entity of Directus, went through an active year of changes. First, the company merged with partner agency Ashe Avenue, combining efforts and increasing in size. A few months later, the new company amalgam was acquired by Aol — with all Directus IP being explicitly excluded from the deal. Not long after that, Aol was acquired by Verizon. Ben was in a comfy senior leadership position at a Fortune 50 company, but had to moonlight with his external Directus team to keep its momentum.
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2016 — The re-establishing of RANGER, and re-igniting of Directus
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With the surge of the headless CMS, and nascent platforms starting to capitalize on the trend, Ben decided to leave his position at Aol/Verizon to refocus his efforts on the Directus platform. Serendipitously, this was also the exact moment that Rijk van Zanten reached out to join the team and refactor the platform as his senior thesis. It immediately became apparent that Rijk would play a substantial role in shaping the ecosystem's future.
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2018 — Directus decouples the App in Vue
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Six years after the release of v6, the Directus team announced the altogether new Directus 7. This new version took the big leap of decoupling the App from the API, for the first time ensuring that all features of Directus were available programmatically. Backbone.js was left behind, and the new App was built using Vue.js, with the API being refactored in PHP with Slim and Zend.
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2019 — Directus 8, and a focus on UX/UI
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Directus 8 was an evolutionary version, honing the App's user experience and user interfaces. Patches and minors were released every few days/weeks, and the platform took on a continuous integration approach. While this development was taking place, something even bigger was being strategized behind the scenes...
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2020 — Directus 9, and the shift to Node
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After years of research and planning, the team finally revealed the big plans for Directus 9: a full ecosystem refresh. First, the App was completely rewritten in Vue.js 3, finally perfecting the design system after 16 years of iteration. In parallel, two API refactors were started: one in PHP-Laravel (after Zend was deprecated), and another in Node.js. Development of the Node port proved faster, and the API was more performant in benchmarks — and so it became the primary codebase, and defined the software's specification from that point on. Docs were rewritten, video tutorials recorded, Cloud was split into On-Demand and Enterprise, and a new marketing site was published.
And now here we are — already preparing for what comes next!
