Several months ago, Zend launched its Zend PHP Certification exam much to the interest of the PHP community. The objective of this exam is to certify individuals with broad, advanced knowledge of PHP and set them apart in the marketplace. As with any vendor-specific certification, one could expect the certificate to hold significant value when applying for a position that requires use of the technology in question. The exam is priced at $200, the same price as each of the MySQL exams, but still a bit more than the typical Microsoft or CompTIA exams, which cost $125 on average.

The exam curriculum was developed by the PHP Education Advisory Board, formed by Zend to specifically to oversee the PHP Certification program. The board consists of an impressive lineup of PHP developers, contributors, trainers, and authors, all of whom have made significant contributions to the PHP community and who without a question represent the best available group of individuals to determine exam coverage and curriculum. Several of these individuals contributed directly to the official Zend PHP Certification Study Guide. The guide follows the list of exam objectives from the Zend website thoroughly.

On Saturday, October 23, 2004, I took the Zend PHP Certification exam. After missing the special offer from Zend to take the exam for $100 in September, I took the initiative in October to drop Zend an email to ask if I could receive the $100 discount, telling them that I was prepared to take the exam the following weekend. The individual cordially agreed and created a saved shopping cart on my zend.com account, where I proceeded to pay the remaining $100 for my exam voucher. From this point it was simply a matter of registering with Pearson VUE through their website, a painless and quick process. My voucher was ready and waiting when I logged in and I scheduled my exam for 1:00 PM the following Saturday.