The History of TYPO3

TYPO3 was developed from scratch by Kasper Skårhøj, a Danish developer, in 1997. The term “Content Management” was still widely unknown, but as websites became more and more complex, the idea to have a system that separated design and content was a smart solution to an emerging problem. 

Kasper doesn't develop on TYPO3 anymore but continues to meet with and inspire the community at some events. You can meet him on his website or read Kaspers Korner with more personal insights and TYPO3 history.

1997

Somewhere in Denmark: Kasper Skårhøj, a developer, identifies requirement for a new kind of CMS, as customers need a tool to maintain their website content without messing with the design.

1998

  • He develops 3 prototypes and continuously improves them; the final concept emerges
  • TYPO3 is taken under commercial development by the web agency superfish.com and strategic goals are set
  • August: Kasper visits the Seybold exhibition in San Francisco and has a meeting with David Siegel, a famous computer scientist
  • October: TYPO3 is presented as an industrial strength web content management in a workshop held by David Siegel at the IFRA exhibition in Lyon, France
  • November: superfish.com teams  up with the danish branch of Saatchi & Saatchi, to bring them into the internet business in a single leap

1999

  • Technical foundation of TYPO3 is finalised
  • A new core is developed from scratch that proves a flexible and powerful base for the system until today
  • August: Kasper leaves superfish.com with the TYPO3 development rights
    This step is based on the difficulties he experiences combining the high requirements of internal quality with commercial software development. The latter would require immature releases, ending up with an incoherent patchwork of code inside TYPO3. Additionally, Kasper discovered that he was more passionate about sharing and setting his own agenda that pursuing the traditional commercial route; so Kasper goes solo.

2000

  • August: Launch of the first public beta-version
    Having initially thought the project would need another 6 months, Kasper launches the first public beta-version in August 2000 - 12 months down the line after leaving his old agency and only a week before getting married. TYPO3, intially developed in the protected sphere of non-publicity, has now entered the second phase: the merciless crash-testing from the open source world.
  • December: TYPO3, having passed the "quality test", gathers a steadily growing community. New ideas and new feature requests boost the development.

2001

  • April: Kasper hosts the first, weeklong TYPO3 workshop for the Swiss new-media academy "Hyperwerk"
  • Summer: Major clean-up and streamlining of the code
    Result: strengthening the TYPO3 code base, defining concepts for extendability
  • September: The German IT professional magazine iX on TYPO3, crediting it generally favorably and proving TYPO3 is now a major PHP-based CMS

2002

  • Winter: First TYPO3 community meeting
    25 TYPO3 aficionados meet for an exhilarating week of snowboarding and TYPO3 seminars in Austria. The snowboard tour was born.
  • TYPO3 Milestone, May 24th: Release of TYPO3 version 3.0, leaving the beta-stage behind
  • May 29th: The German PHP Magazine features  of 40 PHP based CMSs
    TYPO3 is reviewed in detail alongside 4 commercial systems and holds it's own
  • The Extension Manager: The powerhouse of TYPO3 is conceived, tested, improved and refined
  • November: TYPO3 3.5.0 release
  • Relaunch of typo3.com and typo3.org, featuring a new corporate identity

2004

  • The TYPO3 Association was founded

2006

  • With the release of version 4.0 TYPO3 received an improved user interface and its featureset now allowed it be considered and enterprise content management system, used in complex projects in a wide variety of corporate and business settings

2008

  • Introduction of the TYPO3 Certified Integrator progam

2011

  • TYPO3 version 4.5 "LTS" was published for the first time. "LTS" stands for "Long Term Support" and secured the maintenance and support in the form of updates and security patches for three years.

And more

The TYPO3 Association

A group of long-time contributors, headed by Kasper Skårhøj, found the TYPO3 Association in fall 2004. It is the heart of the project, funding development of the system’s core, providing certfication and representing the project officiall

The TYPO3 Steering Committee

Members of the TYPO3 Steering Committee consistently work for TYPO3 and attend general assemblies, where they vote and decide on the Association's future.

Conferences

TYPO3 hosted its first international conference, the TYCON3, in Karlsruhe, Germany, September 8-11, 2005.

Renamed T3CON in 2006, the annual event caters for business users rather than developers.

Developer Days

The first international TYPO3 Developer Days took place in Dietikon, Switzerland, August 11-13 2006.

The TYPO3 DD became an annual event with the goal to motivate and integrate developers, thus providing a steady contribution to TYPO3 and guaranteeing its standards.

The Future

The TYPO3 project has a clear vision, a defined roadmap and a strong community.

Every day thousands of pages are viewed and download numbers of the installation package are soaring. The press shows increased interest, commercial use is flourishing. With the release of the new TYPO3 4.5 Long Term Support Version in 2011, our CMS has grown stronger, more reliable and safer than ever.

To cut a long story short: TYPO3 is free and open to everyone, yet powerful enough for mission critical commercial use. It was founded on values of quality, honesty, freedom. And it’s going to stay that way.