I have written up briefly about the vision and the current plan for OpenCerti. The PDF can be viewed here. Use it to forward it to your friends, print it and put it up in your organizations!
I have also booked the www.opencerti.com domain, but am still to post this up there.
For easy read, here’s the content:
OpenCerti is about creating a community driven certification process. Trusted by developers and employers both, this certification will allow fair measurement of developers’ skills. The project will create freedom and opportunities for developers and is based on the foundation of community contribution and trust.
PHP is one of the most popular languages today, yet there is no easy way to determine your PHP skills. The existing certifications are not community driven. It is very difficult to find the right PHP talent these days, and if situation stays as it is, things will get worse. If we bring together a reliable certification process for PHP, it will not only benefit the developers and employers, but also increase the awareness and value of PHP among other developers.
The advantages of this project are:
1.Globally recognized talent measurement
2.Better quality of questions and assessment
3.Better job opportunities
4.Freedom to choose the certification, to contribute
5.Recognition
The current plan is to offer two certification levels. Developer and Expert. The Dev level will have 30 multiple choice questions, covering basics, databases, file operations, sessions, logic, OOPs and more. The time duration will be 20 minutes and the test will be free of cost.
The Expert level, will have aptitude and project management related questions in addition to technical questions. On top of it, there will be two questions where the developer has to write PHP code or a small essay. These will be evaluated by a contributor to the project. The duration for this test will be 45 minutes and it may carry some fees.
We also plan to prepare a guide book for people taking the test. This guidebook (a PDF download) will explain the kind of questions in the test and the test structure. It can also contain resources and PHP tutorials.
The scores / analysis of the test can be made available to public if the developer desires. The developers can use any mechanism to answer the questions (yes, they can refer to the PHP manual or Google!). We can weigh the score by the time taken to complete it, to arrive at a more rational score.
The project is non-profit. We need to work out how we can sustain it though. Donations and charging for the Expert certification is what we thought so far. Your ideas are welcome!
You can contribute to this project. OpenCerti is not about a person or a group of people. It is not about an organization. It is about the whole community. As a matter of fact, consider it your project! Move the project further. Here are some of the ways in which you can contribute:
1.Contribute questions, suggestions
2.Talk / Write / Blog about OpenCerti to your friends, peers, organization
3.Invite other contributors
4.Volunteer to assess the answers
5.Contribute to the documentation, design or testing
6.Take the test!
Feel free to contact us. You have already made a contribution to the cause by reading so far.
Thank you.
Great begining Nirav! and thanks for all the hard work 🙂
Let us start fleshing out the format of the tests, as we had discussed we need a part where there are multiple choice questions as well more indepth questions which will require human intervention for evaluating.
Also we need to somehow incorporate in our final rating contributions to open source PHP projects…
HI Nirav
I read your plan, and it is really interesting and encouraging here are my comments on your plan
I really found the plan very promising, although this is more a vision/objective document as you rightly said.
We should have ‘plan’ with deliverables (haha… .Horrible word ‘Deliverables’ inst it?), let us call this as a formal ‘Project’ as this word makes us quite conscious, committed and responsible.
We need to identify different groups for this for example, Technical group, who would be responsible for technical aspect of this project, like analyzing on exam structure, creating panel of evaluators, etc.
We also need other groups like Promotions group, Marking group, and Branding group.
After creating groups, we can ask members to contribute to group(s) they like to.
Second important point that we need to take care is, what the contributor would get out of this, the reward may not be monetary (or could be, for example people who are contributing to Technical group while conducting exam) , it can be anything, we should conduct poll/survey on group for this, but we must identify why they would contribute.
After having enough contributors to group, we all together needs to define objectives and goals and of course vision then we should ask all the groups to come up with their plan and schedule.
Other important factor, I believe is to have ‘Formal’ non-profit organization for this, as we would require some financial transactions, it requires formal ‘name’, for example, I can persuade couple of organization to donate for this venture, and same way other group members can also do, so we need to think on framework for doing this.
These are my some basic feelings, it might be looking quite ‘formal’ but my experience says that if we just discuss about good concept at broad level without any perfect planning, it never happens and after few months, it starts going on its decline stage, as enthusiasm reduces with time. Let me know what next stage you think on this.
Chirag, you have some amazing ideas! Let’s do all of them!
I think one important point would also be to setup a system on opencerti.com for collaboration and project management.
I talked to one of our clients and he is ready to allow us to use the exam management system we built for him on the site. It’s got frontend in Flash and backend in ColdFusion. If somebody can port the CF to PHP, I can have somebody from my team take care of the Flash work. We can also debate about which tool to use for the exams though 🙂
Really, all it will take to get this project off the ground, is a basic structure and volunteers. Chirag, feel free to start on the processes. And tell me how can I help!
I can provide you access to the opencerti.com site if you would like to setup the basic project infrastructure there.
:Nirav
Hi Everybody,
Please also refer to the OpenCerti Todo and post comments for whatever you think is missing.
:Nirav
Dear Nirav,
I read your plan and I can only say ” Good Going “.The idea of setting levels of certication was in my mind.Well, you have already metioned it in your plan and done good job.Points through which community can contribute, I think you have covered almost required points.
I would like to suggest you one thing.If possible please visit http://www.w3schools.com web sites web certification section.I am sure will get nice idea and will support for future imagination and planning.
Thxx,
Milindkumar Patil,
mkumarpatil@yahoo.com
Hi Milind,
Thanks for the lead. Will check out W3Schools. Would love to have your inputs on what you like on that though. And what we can incorporate. Remember, we will create what we want!
:Nirav
Hi Nirav
i learnt it and this time have posted my comments on proper place (OpenCerti Todo)
have a look
Thanks
I took the HTML Quiz on W3Schools and found it very good. That makes me think if we should include HTML questions in the PHP certification…
What should be the topics to cover in the PHP certification?
– PHP Basics / Syntax
– Array functions
– String functions
– DB connectivity
– XML
– Object oriented programming
– Templates?? Smarty??
– PEAR
– Security
– HTML?
– Site management?
Zend does this..
Also, Tarique mentioned about contribution to PHP projects. That’s also a good thing to add. If you have contributed to an open source project, you can get some bonus points!
Dear Nirav,
Thats really great that you have visited http://www.w3schools.com and get tested yourself with HTML hope got 100 out of 100 :).I did pass with perfect tag :).ok, this is only to have bit smile on face and I like happy faces.
HTML quize you have reffered is quite basic.You may have noticed.Though simple but sounds good.
Your idea is good of including HTML queries.Personally, I think we should cover HTML,JavaScript,CSS,XHTML,XML,SQL,MySQL,PHP and Apache.Why sometimes we may find connection between above technologies while composing questions.I hope you got the reason behind including all above web related technologies.If gone through above all you may notice that I excluded Microsoft technologies.It is delebrate attempt.No need to give reason,right.Or what do you think?
Listed topics are fine.But I desire to include some other topics too.I am giving few more..
-Things require to know to be web developer or designer or programer.
-Project proposal.
-Project lead
-Project management
-PHP Numbers
-PHP Date and time
-PHP functions (creating functions)
– PHP variables
-PHP web basics (cookies,redirecting,session,flushing,buffering,error logging, HTTP, etc)
-PHP Forms
-PHP web automation
-PHP Internationlization and localization
-PHP regular expressions
-PHP Graphics
-PHP encryption and security
-PHP Internet services
-PHP files
-PHP Directiories
-PHP PEAR
-Client side PHP
-PHP error handling
-Possible settings or changes in php.ini
-PHP error handling or reporting
-PHP connectivity with web servers or get along with available servers for eg. Apache, IIS etc.
-PHP and MySQL
-PHP and other technologies
and so on.List may append other few topics further.
And you have mentioned *smarty*.This is template engine or in other words, its an application in PHP which is readymade.The chief point in smarty is template.So just focus on templates.
for eg.
-what is templates
-fast templates
-embedding them in PHP.
-Other basic things.
Gradually, things will be get posted.
By the way,On the advent of time to send some useful info, where should we send queries or any suggestions?
Thxx,
Milindkumar Patil,
mkumarpatil@yahoo.com
Thanks a lot Milind! That’s a great list!
I agree that we should cover the other things to make it a complete LAMP certification. BUT — do we want to make it a LAMP certification or a PHP certification? That’s the big question!!
Opinions welcome!
And as for sending info, you can email them to me if it can’t be shared with all (e.g. test questions) : nirav ( a t ) magnet-i ( d o t ) com
Otherwise feel free to post here, till we figure out something better!
Dear Nirav,
Thxx for quick response.I was really awaiting.
Well, if I am not exaggeratting it should not be LAMP or WAMP – here W for windows.
If you have gone through your PHP certification postings, you may notice that you have mentioned like this project is for PHP community and by PHP community.Its similar as we define “Democracy”, a country run by people and for people.In similar way we can name it or define it.I think this project will run by PHP community and for PHP community.Everybody with liberal ideas or opinions will be welcomed.
I suggest that the name like “PHPCOMM certification” (you can see that I have used abbreviations ).I am sure nobody will express there wrath :).
I have noted down your email id for proper communication.
Thxx,
Milindkumar Patil,
mkumarpatil@yahoo.com
Hi Milind,
That’s precisely my point. We should limit ourselves to PHP for now. And not go into Apache or even may be no MySQL (on second thoughts).
As for the name, let’s invite suggestions!
:Nirav
Dear Nirav,
Well, let’s see.
Thxx,
Milindkumar Patil,
mkumarpatil@yahoo.com
Hi Nirav,
I can definitely help out on the Flash end. The EMS system that you are talking of … I know the Flash frontend of it in and out 😉
Let me know if the community decides to use flash. Will be more than glad to help.
:Vaishali.
hi all,
i searching high and low to get php and mysql post training test question .
where can i get the test questions