8 Resources For The Magento Certified Developer Exam

If you are planning to take the Magento Certified Developer exam, you might get caught in a web of uncertainty of where to begin. Here’s a list of 8 resources to get you on the right track.

0. Magento Certified Developer Study Guide

Listed as resource zero, this resource is a must. The Magento Certified Developer Study Guide should be your starting point for the exam.

Outlining the subjects which can be tested during the exam, it’s an ideal todo-list for quickly outlining what parts of Magento you need to dive in.

1. Magento U – “Fundamentals of Magento Development” - Paid, $199

The “Fundamentals of Magento Development” course is the official starting point for those looking to dive into Magento development. The course contains 40 hours of content and starts at the absolute basics. It is available on-demand and a subscription gives you a 3-month period to consume the content.

Getting official course material for 5$ per hour should be considered a steal. However, the downside of this course material is that it does not cover the entirety of the Magento Certified Developer Study Guide.

Magento U course material is also available through an official Magento instructor-led course in a classroom-like environment.

2. Study Group Moderator’s Kit - Paid, $49.50

Originally intended as a kit to get you started with setting up an MCD study group, it is perfectly viable for solo usage. The Study Group Moderator’s Kit contains a meeting-oriented workflow for getting up to speed with Magento development.

Each meeting (twelve total) outlines theoretical background on a subject and accompanying exercises which helps to chunk the entire exam its coverage into smaller chunks. This kit is ideal for local user groups but also for Magento agencies planning to have their employees take the exam in a batch.

The Study Group Moderator’s Kit is also available through an official study group led by Magento instructors.

Update: Ben Marks notes in 3 Comments that there is a Magento U-hosted version of the Study Group (ten one hour sessions). The study group is hosted through GoToTranining – an online classroom experience. Priced at $500, but includes a voucher for the exam which effectively sets the price around $250.

3. Various blogs

• The BelVG blog offers a wide variety of Magento certification theory in their Certification”-category.
• Just like BelVG, magestore has a whole bunch of articles about the Magento Certified Developer exam on their corporate blog.
• If you are preparing to become a Magento Certified Developer, you probably already read most of Alan Storm’s Magento articles in your earlier days. It’s however still a valuable resource. No teaching in a “put this here and there”-way but actual theoretical background on the matter; just what you will need for the MCD exam.

4. MageCert

MageCert is a project by the folks over at Meanbee which originated from a lack of centralized theory for the Magento Certified Developer exam.

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It contains a total of ten chapters which are aligned with the Certification Study Guide. Note that the Study Guide Questions index isn’t complete. If you think you have something to contribute, be sure to fork the project on Github.

5. MageStudyGuide

Comparable to MageCert, MageStudyGuide (on Github, too) attempts to map the Certification Study Guide to concrete theoretical information. At about chapter five (Entity-Attribute-Value Model) it is however cut off and the remaining chapters only have sparse information attached to them.

Though we really like the idea of both MageCert and MageStudyGuide, in an ideal situation these two would combine their efforts to build a true centralized knowledge base for the Magento Certified Developer Exam.

6. The Official Magento Knowledge Base

Though a bit hectic and sometimes unorganized, the official Magento knowledge base has a lot of information about Magento development. Though often not directly linked to the MCD exam, it still has a lot of valuable information you can skim over in preparation for the exam.

7. The Grokking Magento Series

Intended as accompanying learning material for the MCD-exam, the Grokking Magento series by Vinai Kopp and Ben Marks is perfect for preparing for the Magento Certified Developer exam. We published a review of the book.

Sadly, at the moment of writing, only one book has been published yet (Magento Basics & Request Flow). Recommended is to use this book as the icing on the cake of your MCD studies.

8. magento.stackexchange

Last on our list is the Magento StackExchange Q&A platform. It has thousands of questions for you to explore and learn from. In addition to that, you can also use it to raise questions during your studies.

In fact, this question inspired us do this round-up.

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Hopefully these resources will help you with studying for the Magento Certified Developer exam. If you have anything to add, let us know in the comments or notify us on Twitter.