This document outlines the steps to prepare for the Acquia certification exam. It discusses understanding the exam goals, blueprint, and question format. Candidates are advised to self-assess strengths and weaknesses across key domains before focusing study on weak areas. The document provides sample questions and recommends reviewing projects, themes and modules to strengthen skills. Tips for taking the online or in-person exam include arriving early, using one monitor, and going with the first answer.

2. Preparing for Acquia
Certification

3. What we will cover
• About the certification program
• Five steps of preparation
1. Understand the goals of the exam
2. Understand the exam blueprint
3. Understand the nature of questions asked
4. Find out your own strengths and
weaknesses
5. Work on your weak areas
• Tips on taking the exam
• Resources available

4. About us
Prasad Shirgaonkar
Curriculum Developer,
Acquia
@prasadshir
Heather James
Manager, Learning Services,
Acquia
@learningdrupal

5. ABOUT THE PROGRAM

6. Tracks

7. Exam details
• Details acquia.com/certification
• Take: Online and in-person at test centers
• Duration: 60 questions in 90 mins
• Cost: $250

8. Peter Manijak
https://www.acquia.com/resources/acquia-tv/conference/get-
certified-acquia-certification-program-march-26-2014
Certification introduction
with Peter Manijak, Global Lead for Certification

9. STEP 1: UNDERSTAND THE GOAL

10. Goal:
Validate a candidate’s ability to…
• Develop Drupal based solutions
• Understand the core Drupal architecture
• Drupal front and back end development
• Customize and extend existing modules and
themes
acquia.com/blog/how-to-build-a-drupal-team

11. Who is the certification for?
• Not for novices (< 6 months experience)
• 6 months + experience in areas outlined in
exam objectives

12. STEP 2 - EXAM BLUEPRINT

13. The exam blueprint
Domain
% of
Examination
1.0 Fundamental Web Concepts
10%
2.0 Site Building
30%
3.0 Front end development (theming)
27%
4.0 Back end development (coding)
33%
https://www.acquia.com/products-services/drupal-training/certified-developer-
exam-blueprint

14. What knowledge is needed?
• Fairly good understanding of all the three core
Drupal domains
– Site Building
– Front end development
– Back end development

15. STEP 3 - UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF
QUESTIONS ASKED

16. Nature of questions : Scenario
based
• Scenario: situation with a use case or a client
requirement
• Question: about the scenario or the problem
• Options: four or more choices with possible
resolutions

17. Sample question
You are running a popular local news portal. A mobile app developer in your
area approached you for a permission to syndicate your content on their
mobile app. They are requesting the content be made available as a feed
rather than in HTML format.
How can you provide list of latest articles in RSS format?
1. Create a view with a Feed display filtering only the Articles content type
2. Create a view with a Page display filtering only the Articles content type and under filter options
enable the RSS filter
3. Create a view with a Page display filtering only the Articles content type and under Style output
options select RSS Feed instead of Unformatted List
4. Create a view with a Page display filtering only the Articles content type, modifying the .tpl.php file
for the view and render the output in RSS format

18. STEP 4 - FIND OUT YOUR STRENGTHS
AND WEAKNESSES

19. Find out your own strengths and
weaknesses
• You might have made a judgement about
where your own skills
• Quite natural for a person to be more
experienced in one of the domains than others
• Quite likely that a person has hands-on
experience on certain topics

20. Self-assessment tool
• Access the sheet here:
• bit.ly/acquiasat

21. Self-assessment tool
bit.ly/acquiasat

22. Rank your skills
• Scale of 0 to 10 against
each test objective
• 8+ implies strengths.
• 5 to 7 implies some prep
needed.
• Less than 5 a lot of prep, or
guided instructions
required.

23. STEP 5 - WORK ON YOUR WEAK AREAS

24. Step 5 : Work on your weak
areas
• Challenges
– Find and study documentation and
knowledge resources for the topics
– Find enough number of practical case
studies covering the topics.

25. Site Building Review
Review several (3-5) Drupal 7 projects
Ask questions:
• Why the configurations are the way they are?
• What can be changed or improved?
• What are the issues or support requests raised by the
client?
• What changes were made to initial configurations and
why?

26. Front end development
Find custom themes developed by your
team over last year
Ask questions:
• Is the theme implemented exactly as per the designs? If not, what changes
were needed and why?
• Are theme regions optimum? Is there any redundancy?
• Are there any theme settings?
• How are CSS and JS files called in the theme?
• Are there any preprocess functions used? Why?

27. Back end development
• Need an overall understanding of Drupal’s
API, core hooks system and their
applications.
– Attend a module development course
– Build a small module on your own
– Try the Examples Module
https://drupal.org/project/examples

28. Tips

29. Taking it at an exam center...
• Arrive 15 minutes before
• Bring copy of your registration email
• Photo ID
• Reschedule? 24 hours prior

30. For Online
• Check the system requirements
• Install software 1 day in advance
• Select a silent room
• Keep a bottle of water handy.
• Switch off your mobile
• Don’t use 2 monitors,

31. As you take the exam...
• Start with questions you know
• Save harder questions for review
• Go with your instinct and first response
• There are no trick questions
• DON’T overthink!

32. Resources

33. Free E-book available soon

34. http://training.acquia.com/

35. Any questions?

36. http://training.acquia.com/

37. Thank you!