What is an Acquia Triple Certified Drupal Expert?
When considering who to partner with for help launching your next website, why settle for anything less than the best? Elevated Third is proud to have two Acquia Triple Certified Drupal Experts on our development team, Mike Lander and Gurwinder Antal, who help oversee every project we work on.
These roles are incredibly important to our implementation workflow, and represent Acquia’s highest level of Drupal certification. In order to help everyone understand the significance of this certification, we’ve put together this explainer to explore what the certification process looks like and the value these experts provide.
WHAT DOES ACQUIA TRIPLE CERTIFIED MEAN?
First, it’s important to understand Acquia’s role in this certification process.
Acquia is the leading cloud platform SaaS company for Drupal websites and is run by Dries Buytaert, the creator of Drupal. Within the Drupal community, Acquia serves as the administrator and regulator of the premier professional certification program.
A program like this provides an enormous amount of credibility, helping developers stay up-to-date on industry trends and keeping best practices top-of-mind, while allowing partners to know they are working with one of the top Drupal users in the world.
To become an Acquia Triple Certified Drupal Expert, a developer must successfully achieve certification in the Acquia Certified Developer, Acquia Certified Back End Specialist and Acquia Certified Front End Specialist exams. These exams are conducted on Acquia Academy by a testing partner, and interested developers can register online at any time.
Why Does It Matter?
Passing three of the most rigorous Drupal certification exams is a daunting task, but how does the time and effort put into completing these tracks translate to project success?
With more knowledgeable and engaged developers, clients gain an incredible competitive advantage. Acquia Triple Certified Drupal Experts are well-equipped to look for new ways to innovate and develop modules that deliver never before seen functionality within Drupal.
In the past, our Triple Certified developers have used their knowledge to develop a fully decoupled Drupal project that proved highly successful for our client and continues to serve as a benchmark in the industry.
Let's take a deeper look into what is required to earn the Acquia Triple Certified Drupal Expert credentials:
Acquia Certified Developer Exam
The more general of the three exams focus on the areas of fundamental web concepts: site building, front end development, and back end development. Specifically, this exam tests a developer’s level of knowledge and ability to:
- Setup and configure new websites
- Develop and implement new Drupal modules and themes
- Customize and extend existing modules
Acquia Certified Front End Specialist Exam
This test specifically focuses on a developer’s skills and knowledge of Drupal front end theming, including:
- Fundamental web development concepts including: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, jQuery
- Theming concepts like custom regions, theme configuration, stylesheets, breakpoints, sub-themes
- Templates and pre-process functions, Twig syntax, templating, Form Alter and Template Suggestions After
- Layout configuration, Blocks, views, and the Responsive Image module
- Performance/security, analyzing and resolving site performance/security issues from site configuration and custom themes
Acquia Certified Back End Specialist Exam
This exam validates the skills and knowledge of building and implementing Drupal solutions through module development. This test focuses on:
- Fundamental web development concepts including: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP programming, managing dependencies using Composer, Git for version control, and Automated Testing concepts
- Drupal core API tasks like registering paths for URL requests using Routing system and Menu API, building and validating forms using Form API, and interacting with Entity system using Entity API
- Debug code and troubleshooting
- Theme integration
- Performance and Security
- Ability to use Core APIs for building and extending Drupal functionality
- Ability to write code using Drupal Coding Standards
- Contributing modules back to the Drupal community
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME?
To know there is a Triple Certified Expert on your team is to know your project will be influenced by someone with extensive experience with the entire development Drupal landscape, not just specialization in one area of development. This well-rounded background helps the developer have a better understanding of how the different pieces of a project come together to create a powerful, flexible, and scalable digital platform.
At Elevated Third, having Acquia Triple Certified Drupal Experts on our team is a guarantee that our clients have direct access to the top talent in the industry when developing their sites and enables us to produce extraordinary digital experiences.
If you are looking to thrill your customers with world class Drupal talent, let's talk.
