Magento

We’ve noticed that the Magento community has formed study groups to prepare for the Magento Developer Certification test. To help with this effort, Magento U has created a Moderator’s Kit with sample exercises and study guide to enable a moderator to run a study group. The moderator decides where and when the group meets and Magento U provides all the tools you need. The Moderator’s Kit includes:

• Multiple exercises per topic area
• Twelve sample exercises
• Participant handouts
• Detailed agenda for each meeting
• Moderator guidelines

Group activities lead you through the study guide, Magento source code, and structured exercises in a way that facilitates covering all exam topics in a group setting.

Preparing for the Magento Developer Certification exam is an important step toward achieving the Magento Certified Developer title and giving your career a boost! 

Magento: Tell us a little about your business, and how you became involved with Magento.

Younify : Emile Koolstra started Younify in 2007 with the sole purpose of delivering e-commerce applications that boost revenue and profit. We are not a full service internet agency. Full service internet agencies subcontract to us to develop their e-commerce applications.

In 2008 Younify discovered Magento as a new e-commerce solution and decided to specialize in developing professional online stores with unique designs and complete integration with existing business processes and systems. Since then Younify has earned a premium reputation in the Magento eCommerce community, thanks to our broad portfolio, our ability to build technical solutions other vendors were unable to deliver, and the arrival of A-list brands to our portfolio.

Magento: What types of projects have you worked on?

Younify : Samples of our work can be found on our website; there are many online stores we are proud of. MyMiller.nl is one of them—it has a chair configurator offering up to 1,2mio product options fully integrated with the Magento platform.

Magento: What is your vision?

Younify : We believe that the online market should be easily accessible for any merchant. Younify wants to provide people and companies with experience, know how and solutions that create succesful e-commerce businesses.
Our employees play a key role in achieving this vision. By offering a reliable, challenging working environment driven by continuous innovation we keep them sharp and crisp. Thanks to a very stable, positive and rewarding atmosphere where we focus on gathering knowledge, our employees are loyal and willing to walk the extra mile every day of the week.

Magento: What are two of the key factors behind your success with Magento?

Younify : First, our unique designs generate high conversion rates and strong customer retention. We don’t like stores built on existing commercial templates. Second, our experience in the automation of business processes and the integration of ERP systems. Younify has integrated with major ERP systems like SAP, Exact Globe, Microsoft Dynamics and others.

Magento: Why did you decide to have your developers take the Magento Developer Certification exam?

Younify : We strive to be a premier Magento partner and focus on the more complex projects. We believe the developer certification program is a good way to recognize our current Magento knowledge, and help us attract more business. Just as importantly, it allows our employees to advance themselves in their professional careers.

Magento: How many Magento Certified Developers do you current have on staff? How will having these certified developers help your business?

Younify : We currently have 2 developers certified with a few more certifications to follow in the coming weeks. I believe the certification program will help us validate our abilities, and ensure we apply Magento’s best practices in our work and offer our employees a good path for professional growth.

Magento: What types of projects have you worked on?

Younify : Samples of our work can be found on our website; there are many online stores we are proud of. MyMiller.nl is one of them—it has a chair configurator offering up to 1,2mio product options fully integrated with the Magento platform.

To find out more about how Younify can help you build a better eCommerce business with Magento, visit their listing page on our website.

Developers: find out how you can join the growing ranks of Magento Certified Developers:

Get trained and gear up for the second half of the year by taking advantage of the many courses offered by Magento U. Magento U helps you get the tools, expertise and best practices needed to maximize the value of your Magento deployments. Here’s the summer schedule of courses you won’t want to miss.


Fundamentals of Magento Development
5 Day Classroom course
Designed for both developers new to Magento and for the seasoned developer ready to formalize their Magneto knowledge. In this course you will learn about Magento architecture, MVC and data models, how to work with Magento modules, and how to customize and extend Magento.

Scheduled Classes:

• June 4 -8 Paris and Los Angeles
• July 9-13 - Los Angeles
• July 16 - 20, 2012 - Munich
• August 6-10, 2012 – Sydney Australia
• August 20 - 24, 2012, 2012 - Los Angeles

Core Principles of Theming
Live Online Instructor–Led course; 8 sessions from 7am – 9am Pacific
This course is designed for frontend developers, UI developers and producers who will be creating and customizing themes for the Magento platform.

Scheduled Classes:

• June 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 14 & 15, 2012
• July 30, 31, August 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 & 9, 2012

eCommerce with Magento
Live Online Instructor–Led course; 4 sessions from 7am – 9am Pacific
In this course, merchants and business owners get up to speed on the current landscape of eCommerce and where it is heading. Discover how a Magento eCommerce solution can enhance multiple aspects of your business, not just sales in this course from Magento U.

Scheduled Classes:

• June 11, 13, 18 and 20, 2012
• August 6, 7, 8 & 9, 2012

Ben Marks, Magento course instructor, caught up with a few of his trainees from Magento U and found that they have been very busy…creating extensions, working at record pace and getting certified! Here is just a sampling of what he uncovered!

Paris FunDev student is now a Magento Certified Developer: https://twitter.com/#!/steven_vdp/status/187861972228915201

LA FunDev student has a custom Adminhtml tab: https://twitter.com/#!/mrinabh/status/187731586656124929

Mark Shust from FunDev class #1 has a lot going on!

• Magento blog posts: http://markshust.com/tags/magento
• Seven extensions in Connect: http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/developer/markoshust

Are you interested in learning the Fundamentals of Magento Development like the developers highlighted above? Want to join Paris FunDev and Mark in the ranks of certification? Join us by enrolling in one of the upcoming Fundamentals of Magento Development classes below:

• Zurich – May 7-11, 2012
• Los Angeles – May 14-18

Can’t make these classes? Check out our training schedule today. 

We are pleased to let you know that the final course in the series, Managing Your Magento Store - Part 3: Operations, is now available in the On-Demand, Video format. In this new one hour course, you are introduced to topics such as order management, fulfillment and customer service.

If you haven’t already taken advantage of the first two parts of our three part series on the Magento Admin panel to help optimize the management of your store, now is your chance to get the series in its entirety for Free for a limited time.

Important Note: During the registration process, please enter the same student email address as you currently use when logging into your Magento Account to access the courses. This will ensure that your courses are consolidated in the same account.

We’re happy to report that Magento Industry Partners are jumping on the Developer Certification bandwagon. Today’s profile focuses on Sweet Tooth, a partner that is an “early adopter” when it comes to having their developers earn Magento Developer Certification. Bill Curtis, Sweet Tooth’s Director of Platform and Engineering, sat down with us to talk about Sweet Tooth, Magento, and the importance of certification.

Magento: Let’s start with some history on Sweet Tooth. How did the business begin?

Sweet Tooth: We started out as a Magento custom development firm when Magento was still in beta. We were – and still are – impressed by the flexibility of Magento and the potential that it offered a developer such as us.

Since then, we’ve shifted away from custom development to focus on our product “Sweet Tooth.” We’ve done so well that we are now 100% devoted to development of Sweet Tooth.

What are the one or two key factors behind your success with Magento?

I’d say that there are two reasons why we’ve done so well with Magento: the community and our knowledge of Magento architecture.

We really believe in the Magento community, so we focus a lot of our resources on supporting our customers. The Magento community is so well connected that one happy customer often leads to three more. The response has been great.

We also invest a lot of resources into Magento training for our support and development staff. Being able to quickly diagnose issues means that we can decrease the time our customers are waiting for a support solution. And our developers have a better understand how Magento works, we have far less bugs that our support team will have to deal with later.

Altogether, we get a better customer experience and lower support & development costs by being properly trained on Magento.

Why did you decide to have your developers take the Magento Developer Certification exam?

We decided to have our developers take this exam because it gives us a way to validate their knowledge. We’ve always thought of ourselves as being good with Magento code, so when we first heard that there would be a Magento Developer Certification exam, we were excited to take it. We wanted to prove to ourselves, and others, that we were among the best.

How many Magento Certified Developers do you current have onboard? How will having these certified developers help your business?

We currently have two developers that are Magento Certified, but moving forwards we will require all our core development staff to be Magento Certified.

The Magento Developer Certification exam gives us a way to accurately test developers on the knowledge that they will need to use every day. For us, it is a great way to validate and distinguish the quality of our development skills.

What else would you like our readers to know about your company?

When we made the decision to focus solely on Sweet Tooth, rather than custom development, we had a Magento community forum group that consisted of merchants who were interested in a customer loyalty extension…so Sweet Tooth was developed using the great ideas and ambition of the Magento Community. We want to say a heartfelt “Thank You” to Magento and the whole Magento community for being so great!

To find out more about how Sweet Tooth can help you build a better eCommerce business with Magento, visit their listing page on our website.

Developers: find out how you can join the growing ranks of Magento Certified Developers:

Inchoo is a Silver-level Magento Solution Partner that already has 4 Magento Certified Developers on staff. In this post, Tomislav Bilić, Inchoo’s CEO, discusses Inchoo’s rapid growth, and shares his perspective on developer certification.

Tell us a little about your business, including how and why you became involved with Magento.

I had a passion for eCommerce solution development since 2003.

When I first noticed Magento back in 2007, the platform was still in its early beta phase, I knew it was going to be the next big thing in eCommerce. I founded Inchoo at the same time Magento released version 1.0. Inchoo’s growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of Magento itself.

What are the one or two key factors behind your success with Magento?

I would say having a great team and sharing knowledge are the keys. We’ve been focused on adding great talent to our team right from the start. Our current roster features developers who have been speakers at Magento conferences as authors of some of the most read articles on specific Magento topics

From day one we also started sharing our work with the rest of the community of Magento developers/enthusiasts.

We have grown to a total of 30 people. Most of us are in Croatia but we also have a branch in Serbia and an Operations Manager in Australia.

Why did you decide to have your developers take the Magento Developer Certification exam?

We were very happy to see the launch of Magento Developer Certification. We felt this would be a great opportunity for us to take our business to the next level. Our developers saw the certification process as the final confirmation of their hard work and all those hours devoted to mastering Magento.

Our CTO was the first to pass the exam. That motivated the rest of the team to start pursuing certification as well.

How many Magento Certified Developers do you current have onboard? How will having these certified developers help your business?

We currently have 4 Magento Certified Developers, and we’re not stopping – we have many more preparing for the exam.

We feel that having certified developers on board will help us land some of the enterprise-level projects with clients who might have concerns about working with a company from Croatia. We know that some people aren’t sure where Croatia is – we’re hoping to change, and fast.

What else would you like our readers to know about Inchoo?

We’ve had our fair share of Magento clients with scopes of work ranging from straightforward theme designs and implementations to highly custom integrations with 3rd party systems.

We are running a blog about Magento development which is, modesty aside, one of the most famous blogs about the platform amongst our fellow developers. We take pride in giving back to the community by sharing our daily work and code snippets via our blog.

Make sure to pay us a visit if your plans take you close to Croatia – everything is pretty close in our country, so no excuses – we Inchooers are waiting for you!

To find out more about how Inchoo can help you build a better eCommerce business with Magento, visit their listing page on our website.

Developers: find out how you can join the growing ranks of Magento Certified Developers:

Are you an experienced PHP developer interested in learning how to design customizations for the world’s most popular eCommerce platform? You are??? Then we’ve got some great news for you!

Magento U is proud to offer a new On-Demand course, Quick Start to Magento Customization. In this 4-hour On-demand course, students will learn to create a custom module and controller, and get helpful tips on how to avoid bugs and ensure your customization will be compatible with Magento upgrades. Students will come away with a fundamental understanding of how Magento implements the M, V and C in the MVC pattern.