The Certified 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 Front End Specialist exam for both Drupal 7 and 8.
We have guides for the other Acquia exams listed in our Acquia Certification Exam Preparation guide.
1.0: Fundamental web development concepts
In this section of the exam you need to demonstrate knowledge of HTML and CSS, PHP, JavaScript and jQuery programing concepts, along with being able to demonstrate the use of responsive design concepts.
2.0: 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.
Drupal 8
The general overview series is the Drupal 8 Theming Guide.
For specific sub-sections of the exam: 2.1 Demonstrate ability to define and use custom regions in a theme
2.2 Demonstrate ability to work with Theme Configuration
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/theme-settings-overview
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/change-theme-settings
2.3 Demonstrate knowledge of working with Stylesheets
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/what-are-libraries
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/define-asset-library
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/attach-library
2.4 Demonstrate knowledge of working with Javascript in a theme
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/javascript-drupal (and the following tutorials)
2.5 Demonstrate knowledge of working with Breakpoints in a theme
- https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/theming-drupal-8/working-with-breakpoints-...
- https://www.lullabot.com/articles/sharing-breakpoints-between-drupal-8-a...
2.6 Demonstrate ability to build a sub-theme from a base theme
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/drupal-base-themes-stable-and-classy
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/use-base-theme
Drupal 7
There are several series that cover many aspects of theming in Drupal 7:
- Theming Basics for Drupal 7
- PSD to Drupal Theme
- Getting Started with Responsive Web Design in Drupal
- Markup in Drupal
3.0: 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.
Drupal 8
You should be generally familiar with all of the material in the Drupal 8 Theming Guide.
For specific sub-sections of the exam: 3.1 Demonstrate ability to use Twig syntax
3.2 Demonstrate ability to build and customize core templates for managing markup
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/override-template-file
- https://drupalize.me/tutorial/inspect-variables-available-template
3.3 Demonstrate ability to work with template suggestions
3.4 Demonstrate ability to write template pre-process functions for overriding custom output
3.5 Demonstrate ability to use Form Alter and Template Suggestions Alter
Drupal 7
The Advanced Theming for Drupal 7 covers templates and preprocessing.
4.0: 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. Views is very similar between Drupal 7 and 8, so the version for tutorials does not matter in this instance. Blocks are also similar, although in Drupal 8 they have some additional features.
Views
Blocks
General knowledge
These are not required for the exam, but we feel these are fundamentals that all front-end specialists should be familiar with.