Does anyone have any EPiServer Exam Tips?

Question

Myself and some colleagues have just been told that we are all taking the EPiServer CMS certification exam on Friday. Having done some research on the web it does sound like a challenging exam - I've heard that only one in six people pass it.

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of learning material, beyond what is described on the EPiServer site, this blog post and this blog post.

Has anyone else out there passed recently and if so can they provide any hints or tips? Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Be sure to read the episerver editor and admin manuals thoroughly. Most answers are actually found there...

Answer 2

Well, I did the exam and failed by 3% :-(

I have put my thoughts on my blog.

Answer 3

The EPiServer web police seem to have had a word with giles...

...read the manuals and the SDK. It is a pretty tricky exam, actually, and you won't pass it without having a couple of projects under your belt. Examples of topics to brush up on include office integration, workflows, import\export\mirroring, config settings, logging, URL rewriters, page providers, extending the WYSIWYG editor, language handling, search controls, caching... I could go on all day.

Answer 4

Found a great blogpost that might help you.

EPiServer CMS 5 Certified Developer

Answer 5

The EPiServer exam is quite tough. There are a few things worthy of a note at the time of writing this answer/reply:

1. The exam is based on EPiServer CMS 5 (not CMS 5 R2). Download that version and familiarise yourself with it. There are a few subtle differences such as the EPiServer Manager beign used for deployment as oppose to the EPiServer Deployment Center that is used in R2.
2. Make sure you know about more than just development. This exam covers setup as well as general development. You'll need to know about different methods of installation (using the EPiServer manager) and things like mirroring configurations and how the file managers and office integration work. Where I work, we tend to not use those bits too much so this can be tough for our guys.
3. Familiarise yourself with the EPiServer standard controls such as EPiServer:Property and SearchDataSource. Again, we don't use those too much here as we have our own set of functions that we use sitting on top of EPiServer to do things for us.
4. As mentioned by Daniel, read the Editor and Admin manuals, plenty of gems are held in here.

I'm not goingt o write specifics in here, because (and rightly so) , EPiServer woudl rather you learn all of this stuff than someone tell you what the questions are likely to be. Though the provision of information is somewhat frustrating ad you trawl though blogs, forums and the SDK etc to find out how to do things rather than there being a nice concise little curriculum as with MS exams where you can read a book and pass the exam. This one is based on knowledge of the product itself and for that is seems to be amuch more of an indication of technical ability that of achedemic ability.