21 Oct 2025
Tech
October 21, 2025 Rohit D'Souza

Exploring Directus CMS with MySQL

A Smarter Way to Manage Your Data

At Rohit Consultants, we’re always looking for ways to make technology simpler and more powerful for our clients. Recently, while working with Bidvid, we explored Directus, an open-source, headless CMS that works seamlessly with MySQL — and it turned out to be a game-changer.

💡 Why Directus?

Most data interfaces require you to build a lot from scratch — dashboards, APIs, role management, and more. Directus flips that on its head.
It’s a self-hosted, open-source CMS that instantly provides:

  • A ready-to-use, modern admin interface.

  • API management similar to Swagger — making data access structured and secure.

  • A powerful RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) system.

  • An open marketplace of plugins for extensions and integrations.

In short, Directus allows business teams to interact with data without depending on developers every time they need something.

You can even try it yourself here:
🔗 Directus Demo
Login: admin@example.com / password

⚙️ Setting It Up Locally — Simplified

If you’re working with MySQL and want to try Directus yourself, setup is surprisingly simple.

  1. Create your local database & user
    Use phpMyAdmin or your preferred MySQL client to create a new database and user.

    💡 Pro Tip: Create a user first, then the database with the same name (is just a checkbox away) for easy mapping.

     

  2. Run the setup command

    npx create-directus-project directus_prep

  3. Fix any SQL mode issues
    If you encounter errors, check your MySQL configuration and remove extra sql_modes that restrict queries:

    SELECT @@GLOBAL.sql_mode, @@SESSION.sql_mode;

  4. Import your existing data

    mysql -uroot -p directus_prep < dump-bidvid_uat.sql

  5. Start Directus

    npx directus start

And just like that — you have a full-featured CMS interface ready to manage your MySQL data.

Here’s all the steps with screenshots.

🧠 Why This Matters

For businesses managing large datasets — marketing performance, customer data, or campaign analytics — Directus offers:
✅ A no-code admin interface for non-developers.
✅ Real-time access to structured data.
✅ Customizable roles and permissions for security.
✅ Extensibility with community-built modules.

At Rohit Consultants, we’ve used Directus to help clients like Bidvid empower their business users — so they can focus on insights, not infrastructure.

🧩 Final Thoughts

If you’re tired of juggling Excel sheets, custom dashboards, and API endpoints, Directus might be the solution you didn’t know you needed. It bridges the gap between raw data and usable insight — all without heavy development overhead.

Whether you’re a startup or an enterprise, Directus with MySQL is worth exploring.

👉 Want to know how we can implement this for your business? Let’s talk at RohitConsultants.com.