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Last year, I completed my Hubspot CMS for Marketers Certification because I wanted to see if I could not only pass a Hubspot exam, but also gain a better understanding of the platform from a marketing standpoint.

As a Hubspot developer, I've discovered that it's all too easy to get caught up in the technical side of things and potentially miss out on all the features Hubspot offers to offer. I found the "Hubspot CMS for Marketers" certification exam to be quite beneficial in helping me see things from a different perspective, therefore I opted to renew it.

I also completed the "Hubspot CMS for Developers" certification as this is something I missed out on last year. This certification consisted of an exam and a practical piece on the core development criteria of building a theme.

Both these certifications compliment one another and highly recommend taking these both if you're working with the CMS side of Hubspot.

Since around September last year, I've been involved in a lot of Hubspot projects at my place of work - Syndicut. It's the latest edition to the numerous other platforms that are offered to clients.

The approach to developing websites in Hubspot is not something I'm used to coming from a programming background where you build everything custom using some form of server-side language. But I was surprised by what you can achieve within the platform.

Having spent months building sites using the Hubspot Markup Language (HUBL), utilising a lot of the powerful marketing features and using the API to build a custom .NET Hubspot Connector, I thought it was time to attempt a certification focusing on the CMS aspect of Hubspot.

There are two CMS certifications:

1. Hubspot CMS for Marketers
2. Hubspot CMS for Developers

I decided to tackle the "CMS for Marketers" certification first as this mostly covers the theory aspect on how you use Hubspot to create a user-friendly, high-performing website and leveraging that with Hubspot CRM. These are the areas you can get quite shielded from if you're purely just developing in pages and modules. I thought it would be beneficial to expose myself from a marketing standpoint to get an insight into how my development forms part of the bigger picture.

I'm happy to report I am now Hubspot CMS for Marketers certified.

Over the Bank Holiday weekend, I had some time to kill one evening and decided to have a go at completing the Kentico Cloud exam to become a certified developer. Taking the exam is a natural progression to warrant oneself as an expert on the platform, especially as I have been using Kentico Cloud since it was first released. Time to put my experience to the test!

Unlike traditional Kentico CMS Developer exams, the Kentico Cloud exam consists of 40 questions to complete over a duration of 40 mins. The pass rate is still the same at 70%.

Even though I have been using Kentico Cloud for many years, I highly recommend developers to get yourself certified providing you are familiar with the interface, built a few applications already and have exposure to the API endpoint. The exam itself is platform-agnostic and you won't be tested on any language-specific knowledge.

The surprising thing I found after completing the exam is a higher awareness of what Kentico Cloud does not only as a platform but also touched upon areas you wouldn't have necessarily been familiar with. There certainly more to Kentico Cloud than meets the eye!

I haven't done the Kentico certified exam for over two years - but this doesn't make me any less of an awesome and competent Kentico Developer. Over the last two years, a lot has changed within the Kentico realm resulting in the subject matter becoming a little more of a challenge to keep up to speed with. Afterall, two years ago we saw the dawn of a new age - the end of Kentico 7 and the start of Kentico 8. I am seeing the same thing happening again, except this time we're just about seeing Kentico 10 making it's appearance over the horizon.

What I noticed this time round was the increased number of questions evolving around macro's. It felt like I was bombarded at the time of carrying out the exam. I think the only thing that got me through is remembering the approach I took to the macro's I wrote for a recent EMS project.

The Kentico Certification Preparation Guide has greatly improved compared to previous versions where in the past questions were pretty simple and a vast contrast to the real thing. This allowed me to gauge a lot more on the type of questions that would potentially be presented, but I did notice quite a few questions from the preparation guide cropped up in the real exam - although slightly re-worded.

I highly recommend anyone who is interested in becoming a Kentico Certified Developer to read the following post by Jeroen Furst prior to taking the exam called: Tips for becoming a Kentico Certified Developer. Jeroen brings up some really good points and guidance to prepare yourself. If only I came across this post two years ago when I wasn't too sure what to expect (being my first Kentico exam), I would have felt more comfortable in understanding what was required.

I was expecting there to be some questions relating to MVC due to all the effort made by the Kentico development team to make the MVC integration seamless within Kentico 9. Alas, this was not the case. Jeroen also states the following:

If you are planning to take any older v6, v7 or v8 exams (if still possible) you might run into questions regarding Azure and the Intranet solution. These topics are not part of the v9 exam anymore.

The Kentico 9 exam purely focuses on the core Kentico features as well as the platform architecture every Kentico developer should know in order to build high quality sites. You will also find yourself learning some new things in the process of preparing for the exam as well as brushing up on your existing knowledge.

If you succeed, you can proudly display this badge in all its glory! ;-)

There are many roads and avenues a tech-head can take to either get a grasp on new technology or prepare for certification. Unfortunately, some methods to get the knowledge on a subject can come at a great cost...especially when it comes to anything Microsoft.

Generally, Microsoft has always had some great forum and blogging communities to enable developers to get the expertise they require. I've always found them to be somewhat divided and looked rough around the edges. Now Microsoft has reworked its community and provided learners with a wide variety of courses freely available to anyone!

While MVA courses are not specifically meant to focus on exam preparation. They should be used as an addition to paid courses, books and online test exams to prepare for a certification. But it definitely helps. It takes more than just learning theory to pass an exam.

So if you require some extra exam training or just want to brush up your skills, give a few topics a go. I myself decided to test my skills by starting right from the beginning and covering courses that relate to my industry. In this case, to name a few:

• Database Fundamentals
• Building Web Apps with ASP.NET Jump Start
• Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications Jump Start
• Programming In C# Jump Start
• Twenty C# Questions Explained

I can guarantee you'll be stumped by some of the exam questions after covering each topic. Some questions can be quite challenging!

I've been a .NET developer for around 7 years and even I had to go through the learning content more than once. Just because you've been in the technical industry for a lengthy period of time, we are all susceptible to forget things or may not be aware of different coding techniques.

One of the great motivations of using MVA is the ranking system that places you against a leaderboard of other avid learners and seeing yourself progress as you complete each exam. All I can advise is that don't let the ranking system be your sole motivation to just "show-off" your knowledge. The important part is learning. What's the point in making a random attempt to answer each exam without a deep understanding on why you got the answer correct or incorrect.

You can see how far I have progressed by viewing my MVA profile here: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/Profile.aspx?alias=2181504

All in all: Fantastic resource and fair play to Microsoft for offering some free training!

A couple days ago I passed my Kentico exam. If anything, I think I've learnt more about Kentico and just how much the platform has to offer. The exam is filled with a wide range of questions from the very simple and straight-forward to the ones that require a more time for deep thought.

In fact, I found the first few set of questions so simple, it got me second guessing myself. I'll admit, I found the exam a little tricky and there are some questions you have to read very carefully, especially ones around K# syntax.

I dedicate this certification to all the awesome guys at Syndicut. I seriously couldn't have done it without them.

I guess I can now display this: