Does anyone know of any PHP certification programs out there? Given the nature of open source, I imagine there probably isn't one standardized body that can do this... but I think it'd be a great thing if there was.

There's two types of certifications I'm talking about here:
1) individual certification someone could get that says he/she is is competent in PHP development, web architecture, etc...
2) product certification a group or individual could get for a product they developed using PHP that says the product is tested to be stable, secure, and meets certain coding standards.

This is more for the professional/commercial developer, rather than the tinkerer. Kind of a tool to help market PHP applications and development to the commercial world. I believe one of the reasons why PHP hasn't attained a lot of market penetration in the corporate sector is because there's no way to guarantee a product's quality, or a developer's quality for that matter.

An example of what I'm talking about is Sun Microsystem's certification programs (http://www.sun.com/developers/certification/). They have various certifications individual developers or dev houses can get, and also certifications for products (SunTone, 100% pure java, Solaris Ready, etc). I know Oracle has some similar programs as well.

This is the type of thing I'd like to see in the PHP community... does anybody know if anything like this exists for us open source cronies? If not, would anyone here be interested in starting an initiative like this? I would be totally willing to devote some of my time to an organization that managed PHP certifications... but 1 man can't do the entire job.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

    C we must be on the same wavelength because I was researching this yesterday.

    The only place I found that offered PHP certification was www.expertrating.com - they have certifications for just about everything, but I have no idea how "official" this is. They will let you take their proficiency exam for $10 - not bad... a start I guess.

    hth a little-
    -Elizabeth

      Thanks Elizabeth! That's a pretty good start. I'm looking for something on a larger scale though. In order to be credible you'd need to have more of a specialized group of people organizing it. An organization that only did PHP... or maybe PHP/MySQL/Apache/Linux since they're all kind of related. For example, maybe the folks at php.net, Apache, zend, or some other company/organization that's heavily involved with PHP.

      Maybe even PHPBuilder.com... 😉

      I know a lot about how Sun Microsystems operates (because I actually work for them... shhh, don't tell 'em I'm here 😉 ). So I know their certifications carry a lot of clout, and are highly regarded in the Java/Solaris/Sparc community. Mainly because it's hard to get certified, and it's coming from the people who develop the technology. I'd like to see something similar in the PHP/Linux community.

        Brainbench.com does a ton of this stuff.

          The Brainbench PHP4 certification test is designed for experienced programmers. It's not as hard as they make it out to be really, but I would be familiar with each topic they cover and be aware that there are several questions and aspects that do not directly to PHP which are considered to be common knowledge questions among programmers.

            Last week I filled a survey on www.zend.com asking if one would be willing to pay for a certification program from them.

            I think it would be good to encourage them to do it.

            What are your thoughts on this?

              16 days later

              You guys may have already heard about this, but I thought it was of interest to the board so here you go:
              This, from an article on mysql.com - http://www.mysql.com/press/release_2003_08.html

              "MySQL also plans to offer a MySQL PHP Certification by the end of the year, which is designed for the MySQL and PHP developer who wants to simultaneously certify his knowledge of MySQL and of the PHP Web development tool."

              -Elizabeth

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