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This is the study guide for the Acquia Certified Site Factory Pro Examination.
This guide explains the exam blueprint, breaks down knowledge domains, and helps you get familiar with the nature of questions asked in the exam. It also provides helpful steps to prepare for the exam and links to further resources for study and preparation.
About the exam
The following is the key information about the exam:
- Exam name: Acquia Certified Site Factory Pro
- Exam duration: 60 minutes
- Exam length: 40 questions
- Pass/Fail mark: 65%
The purpose of this exam is to validate skills and knowledge of developers, technical managers, and architects in the area of designing, implementing, and maintaining Site Factory-based solutions.
This exam is meant for Senior Developers, Technical Managers, and Architects working on the Site Factory platform.
This exam validates a candidate’s ability to:
- Understand the features of Site Factory (ASF)
- Understand and use platform administration functionality of ASF
- Implement an optimum development workflow to work with the ASF codebase
- Understand and implement ASF development and deployment best practices
Steps to certification
Newcomer: You are absolutely new to Drupal and Acquia products.
Intermediate: You have Drupal development experience but are new to the Acquia platform.
Advanced: You have Drupal development and ASF experience and wish to get certified.
Take Acquia Academy courses
As a newcomer to the Acquia platform, take the introductory courses of Site Factory on Acquia Academy. This will start you on your journey to certification.
Read product documentation
Reading the product documentation for Site Factory is the best way to gain a clear understanding of the product, its features and functions, and related best practices. In particular, focus on the following areas:
Private training
Acquia offers private training courses tailored to your team’s needs drawing on our full course catalog. Introductory courses require no prior knowledge of Drupal. They may have other prerequisites of prior knowledge or experience.
Gain practical experience
Completing the courses may not make you ready to pass the certification exam. You need to have some real-life practical experience to attempt the exam. For this purpose, we recommend that you gain practical experience by working with at least 2-3 real life projects.
Perform self-assessment
Once you decide to take the exam, we recommend that you study the domains and topics covered by the exam and their relative weights. You should also perform a self-assessment of your own areas of strength and weakness against the domains and topics covered by the exam blueprint. This is a recommended starting point for experienced Site Factory users.
Register for and take the exam
At this stage, you should be ready to take the exam. Follow the instructions for registering for an exam.
Exam domains
Note
This exam blueprint includes topics, domains, and test objectives to help guide the test taker. They should not be construed as a comprehensive listing of all of the content of this examination.
| Domain | % of Examination |
|---|---|
| 1.0 Fundamental Web Hosting and Drupal Architecture Concepts | 15% |
| 2.0 Site Factory Features and Interface | 30% |
| 3.0 Site Builder and Developer workflows on Site Factory | 40% |
| 4.0 Site Factory Best Practices | 15% |
| TOTAL | 100 |
Content
Domain 1.0: Fundamental web hosting and Drupal architecture concepts
1.1. Demonstrate knowledge of basic web hosting architecture
1.2. Demonstrate knowledge of Drupal development workflows and multi-site architecture
1.3. Demonstrate knowledge of key security and performance concepts for a multi-site, multi-server environment
Domain 2.0: Site Factory features and interfaces
2.1. Demonstrate understanding of key features of Site Factory
2.2. Demonstrate ability to perform Platform Administration activities
2.3. Demonstrate ability to configure global site administration settings
Domain 3.0: Site builder and developer workflows on Site Factory
3.1. Demonstrate ability to launch and manage sites
3.2. Demonstrate understanding of code and release management
3.3. Demonstrate ability to manage Theming of Site Factory based sites
3.4. Demonstrate ability to deploy a custom Drupal distribution
3.5. Demonstrate ability to use Staging and Testing capabilities in Site Factory
3.6. Demonstrate ability to use Site Factory API for managing sites
Domain 4.0: Site Factory best practices
4.1. Demonstrate understanding of Governance Models for managing large number of sites
4.2. Demonstrate understanding of Security and Performance best practices
4.3. Demonstrate understanding of best practices for Site Content and Configuration staging
Self-assessment
Experienced Drupal developers will likely know their weaknesses more than they know their strengths. You might have judged your own skill levels while reading through the exam domains listed. It is quite natural for you to be more experienced and proficient in one domain than another. Also, within a domain, it is quite likely that you have hands-on experience on some topics but have never touched other areas within the same domain.
How to use self-assessment
We suggest you perform a skills and expertise self-assessment with respect to the domains and topics listed in the blueprint. The blueprint lists test objectives (topics) for each domain. Rank your skills on a scale of 0 to 10 against each test objective (0 for absolutely zero knowledge or exposure and 10 for complete mastery).
- Topics with a score of 8+ are your strengths.
- Topics with a score of 5 to 7 will need some preparation.
- The ones below 5 may require a lot of preparation, or guided instruction.
You may use the following table to carry out your own evaluation.
Acquia Certified Site Factory Pro self-assessment table
| Domain | Topic | Your Score (1-10) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fundamental web hosting and Drupal architecture concepts | |
| 1.1 | Demonstrate knowledge of basic web hosting architecture | |
| 1.2 | Demonstrate knowledge of Drupal development workflows and multi-site architecture | |
| 1.3 | Demonstrate knowledge of key security and performance concepts for a multi-site, multi-server environment | |
| 2 | Site Factory features and interface | |
| 2.1 | Demonstrate understanding of key features of Site Factory | |
| 2.2 | Demonstrate ability to perform platform administration activities | |
| 2.3 | Demonstrate ability to configure global site administration settings | |
| 3 | Site builder and developer workflows on Site Factory | |
| 3.1 | Demonstrate ability to launch and manage sites | |
| 3.2 | Demonstrate understanding of code and release management | |
| 3.3 | Demonstrate ability to manage theming of Site Factory-based sites | |
| 3.4 | Demonstrate ability to deploy a custom Drupal distribution | |
| 3.5 | Demonstrate ability to use staging and testing capabilities in Site Factory | |
| 3.6 | Demonstrate ability to use Site Factory API for managing sites | |
| 4 | Site Factory best practices | |
| 4.1 | Demonstrate understanding of governance models for managing large number of sites | |
| 4.2 | Demonstrate understanding of security and performance best practices | |
| 4.3 | Demonstrate understanding of best practices for site content and configuration staging |
Preparation
Once you have a list of topics for which you need preparation, you will possibly face two challenges:
- Find and study documentation and knowledge resources for the topics.
- Find enough practical case studies covering the topics.
Knowledge resources
Customers and Partners can self-register on the appropriate branch of Acquia Academy and take courses in the relevant domain to refresh their knowledge.
Available courses include:
- Site Factory Product Introduction
- Site Factory Onboarding Overview
- Site Factory Developer Fundamentals
- Getting Into Code with Site Factory
A list of online resources and documentation for each learning domain appears in the Study Guide section.
Study guide
Domain 1.0: fundamental web hosting and Drupal architecture concepts
1.1 Demonstrate knowledge of basic web hosting architecture
A Cloud Pro understands basic website hosting architecture.
A Site Factory Pro can demonstrate knowledge of basic web hosting architecture as it pertains to Cloud Platform hosting and support.
Resources:
1.2 Demonstrate knowledge of Drupal development workflows and multi-site architecture
A Site Factory Pro can demonstrate knowledge of Drupal development workflows in a multisite architecture.
Resources:
1.3 Demonstrate knowledge of key security and performance concepts for a multi-site, multi-server environment
A Site Factory Pro understands key security and performance concepts for a multi-site, multi-server environment.
Resources:
Domain 2.0: Site Factory features and interface
2.1 Demonstrate understanding of key features of Site Factory
Resources:
- Site Factory Management Console roles
- Managing Site Group Users
- Using Site Factory Stacks
- Site Collections
- Updating with the acsf-init command
- ACSF connector module
2.2 Demonstrate ability to perform Platform Administration activities
Resource:
2.3 Demonstrate ability to configure global site administration settings
Resources:
Domain 3.0: site builder and developer workflows on Site Factory
3.1 Demonstrate ability to launch and manage sites
Resources:
- Managing cron tasks using the management console
- Managing installation profiles in your Factory
- Site performance troubleshooting
3.2 Demonstrate understanding of code and release management
Resources:
3.3 Demonstrate ability to manage Theming of Site Factory based sites
Resources:
3.4 Demonstrate ability to deploy a custom Drupal distribution
Resources:
3.5 Demonstrate ability to use Staging and Testing capabilities in Site Factory
Resources:
- Staging deployments
3.6 Demonstrate ability to use Site Factory API for managing sites
Resources:
Domain 4.0: Site Factory best practices
4.1 Demonstrate understanding of Governance Models for managing large number of sites
Resources:
4.2 Demonstrate understanding of Security and Performance best practices
Resources:
4.3 Demonstrate understanding of best practices for Site Content and Configuration staging
Resources: