These certification guides are fairly outdated. (Some of them were written more than 8 years ago). Look out for official Acquia Certification Study Guides on Acquia website for the latest and greatest.

Posted 8 years 3 months ago.

I had a chance to experience a beta version of the upcoming D8 certification from Acquia. “D8 Foundation” - to be more precise. Thanks to the Learning Services team at Acquia for allowing me to take the exam pre-release.

 

The score is not something I can be proud of. Although it was way higher than what I was expecting it to be. The exam blue print is not published yet. Prior to the exam, I had a chance to look at a draft of the blue print. It isn’t much detailed yet, like the blueprint we have for the Acquia Certified Developer exam. So, it wasn’t much of a help for preparing for the certification.

 

My exposure to D8 has been limited so far. I had ported a couple of modules (simple_fb_connect and FBIP). Built a couple of very small POCs / pet projects on D8 earlier.

 

Like the earlier ones, the exam had questions across all the 3 categories - Site Building, Theming and Module Development.

 

If you are someone who has cleared the Acquia Certified Developer Certification exam, and just diving into Drupal, you will find this exam easy to clear with basic understanding of OOP and Drupal 8.

 

Site Building:

This is the section where Drupal 8 is most similar to Drupal 7. That makes it a very easy section to score even to those who are brand new to Drupal. A few things have changed from D7 to D8 in terms of site building. If you are already a pro in D7 site building,  Chris Shattuck’s Upgrading to Drupal 8 video course (About 1h) will help you bridge the small gap that exists between D7 and D8 site building.

 

Some significant changes in this section between D7 and D8 that you might want to take a loot at would include:

 

Views in core in D8 remains very identical to D7 views. Questions on views would be an easy win if you are familiar with D7 views.

 

Module Development:

Module Development definitely has changed a lot from D7 to D8. Although not as much as Theming. Assuming you are already a D7 Module developer, I am trying to jot down below a few items that I believe will help D8 module development better and score in this section.

 

While that might suffice for the test, I would also recommend going through all the chapters of the book Building Drupal 8 Modules by Thomas Howell.

 

Theming:

Theming is definitely a section that has seen the largest change between D7 and D8.

 

Read about Twig in D8.

 

A good place to start would be Comparison of PHPTemplate and Twig theming paradigms. Adding regions to themes, Adding assets,  the Classy theme, Creating sub-themes are some more items that you could check further on.

 

That should cover just enough to have you covered for the “Foundation” exam. Although I would recommend reading further and taking a deeper dive into D8 theming as below.

 

The D8 theming guide on drupal.org is a good read, covering the below sections.

 

The exam should be an easy one to crack. Leverage the fact that D8 has lot of stuff common to D7, especially in Site Building. That could save your ass. It saved mine.  

 

The exam is expected to be publicly available by Jan 15th 2016.



If you are brand new to D8, consider developing a small hello world module and a basic theme from scratch in D8 before you consider taking up the exam. All the very best!!

 

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Submitted by tanay on Tue, 12/22/2015 - 00:56