Portfolio x Directus

Introduction

There are many CMSs that you can find on the market. For most of my experience, I have been working on WordPress, CraftCMS, Statamic, and Strapi. Some of those are good, with a good developer experience (excluding WordPress). Recently, I came across this “next-gen CMS”, a database-first CMS. As I’ve never seen this before, I couldn’t resist trying it. Spoiler alert: I fell in love with it. Here’s why.

What I like about Directus CMS

Database-first

The biggest advantage of this CMS is that it is database-first. For me, it was a first, I've long been looking for a CMS that would allow me to manage my database like I wanted and fetch the data with Prisma.

Flows

I didn't use them in this project, but I tried them a little, and there are so many possibilities with them, allowing you to format or manage your data as you want it, but also to create the user experience (contact form, notifications, emails).

Interface

Of all the CMSs I've worked with, I would say that this one is my favorite: Well-proportioned, modern, but also very customizable, you can change the logo, and the project name, and also translate everything that is displayed in the interface, that gives a lot of liberty, for tutorials for your clients, or just for naming conventions for the tables in the database.

The downside of Directus

With all of its amazing features and advantages, well nothing is perfect. Here are a few features that I think are missing from this CMS.

Export options

You can easily export data model entries, but there is still the issue of the settings, everything is in the database, but not easily migratable. You can't export your settings which can create human errors depending on the workflow

Conclusion

Calculating the advantages and downsides of Directus, I think this CMS is pretty good. We can still do some workaround for the downsides. This is still the best CMS I've worked with.