Completing the Acquia Certified Developer Exam

There are currently three Drupal certified developers in South Africa and two of them work at Rogerwilco. I am proud to be one after recently passing my Acquia Certified Developer Exam.

Drupal is the open source content management system which we use to build websites at Rogerwilco. Passing this exam was important to me to show, to myself, my peers and the Drupal community, that I have the required experience and expertise in Drupal. The certification validates and proves my skills in Drupal, and provides credibility and visibility to Rogerwilco.

The benefits are that your name will be put on the Acquia certification registry that anyone can search, and you’re given a digital badge that you can use to show you have a certification. You might also learn some new features, and have a better understanding of how Drupal works and Drupal best practices as you go through the study material.

What’s the exam about?

The Developer Exam, which I completed, asks questions about coding, code version control and working directly with the database layer. This also tests your knowledge of creating custom modules for Drupal. To complete the exam, you’ll need some experience in PHP and JavaScript.

 

There should be more than enough time to finish the exam. So, if you get to a question that you don’t understand right away, or the answer doesn’t jump out at you right away, use the “mark for review” function. You’re able to come back to those questions when you are more relaxed.

Preparing for the exam

I think my experience with Drupal helped, having worked on it for about six years. I did go through the Five Steps to Get Ready for the Acquia Certified Developer Exam e-book which covers quite a lot of material and is very helpful.

I also watched a few videos on BuildAModule. I wouldn’t recommend watching everything, as there are probably more than 100 hours of video. Rather identify which areas aren’t your strong points and search for videos on those.

If you’re a Drupal developer, you shouldn’t hesitate to get your certification. Have a look at the different Acquia certification options and find the right one for you.