Guides > Acquia Certified Drupal Front End Specialist Exam
Drupal 9

What will you learn

  • What to study for the Acquia Certified Front End Specialist exam
  • Concepts you should know as a Drupal front end developer

Overview

The Certified Drupal 9 Front End Specialist exam is part of Acquia's Drupal certification program. The exam consists of 60 scenario-based questions that show your ability to design, develop and deploy Drupal-based solutions focusing on the front end, including basic architecture best practices for site building and theme development. We've gathered together a concise list of the Drupalize.Me tutorials, and other resources, that will help you prepare for Acquia's Certified Drupal 9 Front End Specialist exam.

We have guides for the other Acquia exams listed in our Acquia Certification Exam Preparation guide.

The tutorials listed in this study guide are taken from our Drupal Theming tutorials which are also listed in our guide, Theme Drupal Sites.

Drupal 9

1. Fundamental web development concepts

In this section of the exam you need to demonstrate knowledge of HTML and CSS, PHP, JavaScript and jQuery programming concepts, along with being able to demonstrate the use of responsive design concepts.

1.1 Demonstrate knowledge of HTML and CSS

1.2 Identify PHP programming concepts

1.3 Identify JavaScript and jQuery programming concepts

1.4 Demonstrate knowledge of Responsive Design concepts

2. Theming concepts

Generally, you should be familiar with our overviews of Drupal theming, which cover the fundamentals of creating a new theme, working with regions, CSS, and understanding sub-themes.

2.1 Demonstrate ability to define and use custom regions in a theme

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2.2 Demonstrate ability to work with theme configuration

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Learn how to modify the theme settings form and provide custom theme settings in code:

2.3 Demonstrate knowledge of working with stylesheets

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2.4 Demonstrate knowledge of working with JavaScript in a theme

2.5 Demonstrate knowledge of working with Breakpoints in a theme

2.6 Demonstrate ability to build a sub-theme from a base theme

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Tutorial

3. Templates and preprocess functions

This section of the exam will assess your ability to work with core theme templates, as well as creating your own, and modifying your output using the Render API and preprocess functions.

3.1 Demonstrate ability to use Twig syntax

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3.2 Demonstrate ability to build and customize core templates for managing markup

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3.3 Demonstrate ability to work with template suggestions

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3.4 Demonstrate ability to write template preprocess functions for overriding custom output

A front end specialist should be able to use preprocess functions to override, improve, or get extra data needed for templates.

  • Correct use, specificity, and hierarchy of preprocess functions
  • How to obtain information from the Database, or objects and entities from Drupal and know the correct way of passing this information to your template
  • How to use asset libraries to manage JavaScript libraries and stylesheets
  • Be aware of the changes to the theme API and the improvements to previous versions of Drupal
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See the Read section of Working with Entity CRUD for how to retrieve data that you can use in a preprocess function.

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4. Layout configuration

This section of the exam is focused on configuration of core Drupal tools, like Blocks and Views, instead of front-end code work.

4.1 Demonstrate ability to create and configure Blocks for building layouts

4.2 Demonstrate ability to create and configure Views for building content list pages, blocks and feeds

4.3 Demonstrate ability to use Layout Builder module to build layouts

5. Performance

5.1 Demonstrate ability to analyze and resolve site performance issues arising from site configuration

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5.2 Demonstrate ability to analyze and resolve site performance issues arising from custom theme

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Tutorial

6. Security

6.1 Demonstrate ability to analyze and resolve security issues arising from site configuration

6.2 Demonstrate ability to analyze and resolve security issues arising from a custom theme

General knowledge

Drush is considered an essential skill for Drupal site development.

New to the command line? Get up-to-speed with Command Line Basics.

Testimonials

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Drupal Founder and Project Lead
Roger Carr

"They’re easy to understand. They’re thorough. They’re funny. They’re always entertaining, and it makes it easy to learn parts of Drupal and how you can integrate it into your workflow and learn more and have a good time doing it."

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Roger Carr

FAQs

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Am I required to sign a contract?

No. You can purchase a membership and/or cancel any time. Drupalize.Me is a pay-as-you-go service.

Can I preview tutorials before joining?

Yes! Just navigate to our tutorial library. Our free tutorials are labeled with a green "FREE" tag.

Can I watch videos on my mobile device?

Yes! Drupalize.Me is a responsive site and can be accessed in the browser on any mobile device.