EPiServer

I passed the certification for EPiServer CMS 5 this week together with my colleague Mikael Jönsson. Micke and I were already certified for EPiServer 4.31 since three years ago and were surprised to hear that a certification from EPiServer is only valid for two years(!). Our employer Avantime has premium partner status with EPiServer but was now close to loosing it because our certifications were no longer valid to maintain the status. I did keep my certification number of 161 though :) .

Some people have stated on their blogs etc that the new certification test is much harder than before and almost “too hard”. In my opinion that’s not true, at least compared to the old test for 4.31. The questions for the CMS 5 test are much more logical and developer oriented. I remember the old test for 4.31 had a questions like “which year was Elektropost AB (now EPiServer AB) founded”, it’s been three years and I’ve never felt like that’s something I really need to know in order to successfully build websites. The test consist of 68 questsions and you only need to answer 60% correctly which is 5 percent less than the test for 4.60 and if i remember correctly the test for 4.31 required 70%. I’ve been working with EPiServer for a reasonable long time but because I’m tied up with many of Avantimes largest customers I havn’t had a chance to write much code for CMS 5, it’s actually just the last 2 few days before christmas until now (about 2 weeks) that I’ve built a complete site in CMS 5. But of course it’s much easier to pass the test if you have much experience with the EPiServer platform.

Fredrik Haglund has some good pointers on his blog to what you should focus on for taking the test. I would like to add that there are questions on some of the functions you would rarely use, depending on your clients of course, like mirroring, configuring enterprise installations with multiple sites, indexing service for search and load balancing. If you’re new to EPiServer there’s a big chance you’ve never touched those type of settings.

I wish you good luck if you’re attempting to get certified! And don’t forget to snatch some of the EPiServer stickers etc from their reception desk when you visit them, they look great on your laptop :) .

Related posts