Sadly it took me 2 tries to pass the exam, as I underestimated it quite a bit the first time I tried it. I only read the ‘Zend PHP5 Study Guide‘ and didn’t really focus on getting familiar with everything else on php.net/manual, and that turned out to be a big mistake

But the 2nd time I came fully prepared and I’m pretty sure I aced the test !

If you’re planning on taking the exam yourself, here are some pointers with good information that will help you pass:

• Zend.com’s official page with details about the PHP5 Certification exam
• Frank @ Webmantica’s blogpost about his certification exam
• Paul Reinheimer’s presentation slides about studying for the certification exam (local copy, PDF)
• php|architect’s Guide to PHP Design Patterns
• php|architect’s Guide to PHP Security

I’ll emphasise again that it’s very important that you read the entire php.net/manual site and know basicly every function and its arguments before you take the exam. Don’t leave out stuff you never use, like Reflection, streams, SAX parsers, DOM, mysqli and even all the php.ini directives  !