Magento Certified Frontend Developer

After my good experiences with the Magento Certified Solution Specialist certification, I was brave enough to go one step further: To take the Magento Certified Frontend Developer exam. The exam is definitely more challenging than the solution specialist exam, but it is absolutely doable if you know Magento’s frontend part. You want to know how you can prepare yourself? You want to know how my experiences were? Read on!

One more time, I did not really prepare that much as I work with Magento for a long time and created a whole lot of themes in this time. So I thought it should be feasible to pass without too much preparation. Anyway, I of course had a look at the Magento Certified Frontend Developer Study Guide. It really helps to get a feeling what could be asked and what is important. But be careful: One information is now wrong and should definitely be updated in the guide. I think as of 2015 (but maybe also earlier), the exam is based on Magento 1.9 and NOT, as the study guide says, 1.7. This is extremely important, because you now have to know about Magento’s infinite theme fallback and maybe also about the new responsive base theme. At least there were questions regarding the new theme fallback. I am not sure if there are questions regarding the new rwd theme.

Despite the official study guide, there were two other resources I read. First, there are answers to the official study guide questions, again compiled by the guys from Demac Media. Second, Robert Kent started a git book with test questions and answers/solutions to them. I personally had the feeling that his questions were a bit easier than the ones in the exams though, so be warned.

My experiences for the exam itself are quite similar to the ones of the solution specialist exam. The testing tool is quite handy and easy to use as you can mark questions for later review; you are warned if you tick too many answers etc. Additionally, there is really plenty of time. I think I had two hours in total for 71 questions (from which six were unvalued). I took my time, marked a lot of questions for later review, reviewed them and there was still an hour left after I finished. Many of the questions are really easy if you have worked with the Magento frontend for a longer time, but some of them are also a bit more tricky, so do not underestimate the exam. As far as I am concerned, I had – funnily enough – the most problems with the CSS questions. Pro tip: Make sure that you are really fluent in CSS precedences. There is a good and short tutorial by Steven Bradley, which you might want to read and understand.

So yeah, if you know Magento’s frontend architecture and want to bring your Magento skills officially to the next level, go ahead and take the Certified Frontend Developer exam. Good luck!