First and foremost, I thank the Acquia Certification office for allowing me to take the Front-end Specialist exam during the pre-release phase. A few of my friends and I have debated enough about the front-end specialist exam and how Acquia will set up questions. But it's quite a surprise we did not expect the way it was done. We expected the exam to focus more on UI components like HTML / CSS and JavaScript / jQuery. While on the exam, it's evident that the Certification office has justified the Name of this certification; its focus is more on the Drupal Theming layer than HTML / CSS.

Questions in this exam have been categorized as below.

• Fundamental Web Development Concepts
• Theming concepts
• Sub-theming concepts
• Templates
• Template functions
• Layout Configuration
• Performance
• Security

Yes, you read the categorization correctly; it also focuses on Performance and Security aspects. But here, the focus is more on the presentation elements, which can improve performance and security.

Who is this For? This certification is for anyone who does everything in Drupal. i.e., for those Drupalers who do Theme as well as Back-End development. But Drupal Themers should primarily focus on this exam rather than taking up the regular Developer Certification. If you have Drupal theme developers in your organization, you should get them to take this certification.

The section below will help you get ready to appear in this exam. Most of them are videos; just watching those training videos would help refresh your memory on all the concepts you are aware of.

Fundamentals of Web Development Concepts: They focus heavily on jQuery, JS & CSS. If you are already a Guru in jQuery, then you would not need training / refresh in this section. If not, why don’t you spend some time and take a look at the below videos and link to refresh your memory

• Web Development Tutorial for Beginners (#1) — How to build webpages with HTML, CSS, JavaScript: http://youtu.be/3JluqTojuME (Runs for about 14 minutes)
• Fundamentals of CSS : http://youtu.be/d-4ztl7z-OE
• Learn CSS in 12 Minutes: http://youtu.be/0afZj1G0BIE
• jQuery Tutorials (playlist of 10 videos by Learn-code. academy https://plus.google.com/+learncodeacademy guys): http://youtu.be/hMxGhHNOkCU?list=PLoYCgNOIyGABdI2V8I_SWo22tFpgh2s6_
• Introduction to HTML 5 — HTML Programming Tutorial — http://youtu.be/x4OKqZ2kIx4

Additionally, you can refer to these courses from TutsPlus as well

• HTML & CSS in 30 Days from tutsplus https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/courses/30-days-to-learn-html-css (It's Free & you don’t necessarily need to spend 30 days
• 30 Days to Learn JQuery https://code.tutsplus.com/courses/30-days-to-learn-jquery (It's Free, and again, you don’t necessarily need 30 days to finish this)

You can also view these Paid Courses from Lynda.com if you already have an Account

• http://www.lynda.com/Web-Web-Design-tutorials/Web-Design-Fundamentals/150166-2.html (Paid membership required)
• https://www.codeschool.com/courses/fundamentals-of-design (Part of this program is available without subscription)

Google has also created a site for understanding the fundamentals of modern web development, even this might be of a bit of help https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/

Theming Concepts: This section tests your skill in Drupal theming concepts. You need to know what’s Drupal theme, how it works, and what can be achieved with drug

• Introduction to Theming Basics for Drupal 7 http://youtu.be/dS4JR0BbKO8

Sub-theming concepts: Once you master yourself in Drupal Theming, it won't be a humongous task. However, head straight to the links below to understand the Drupal Sub-Theming Concept

• Creating A Drupal 7 Sub Theme — Daily Dose of Drupal episode 60: http://youtu.be/xB7qjZlVKQo
• Styling a newly created Drupal sub-theme — http://youtu.be/9aPyKE_eu6c
• Building a sub-theme Adding custom theme regions — Drupal Creating and Editing Custom Themes — http://youtu.be/LXODWXw0Qqo
• Drupal 7 sub-themes are a very simple how-to guide. — http://youtu.be/R0i5P3QGm5s

Templates & Template functions: This section covers all different aspects of templates & related functions.

• Overview of Template.php from Advanced Theming for Drupal — http://youtu.be/4TfjTjirDq8
• Preprocess Hooks in template php — http://youtu.be/3wzSnsFARA4
• Drupal Hooks — http://youtu.be/sOqrNTvW2s8 (you need to understand the hooks that are related to Theming)
• Drupal 7: Theming Fields and Nodes with Templates — http://youtu.be/sxZQqgvJk3s

Layout Configuration: You should focus on Blocks / Regions on the Drupal theme.

• What are blocks and block regions in Drupal? — http://youtu.be/Z5seWK1A3Xs
• Using and creating blocks and regions — http://youtu.be/yHzWJ_Kcxwo
• Drupal Tutorial: Views Templates — http://youtu.be/qwFHAvOeuFk
• How to add a new Drupal theme region and what regions are — http://youtu.be/_8m3V_3SZ0U
• Drupal 7 — View Modes — http://youtu.be/U-forPTFyIg
• Drupal 7 Views Module Tutorial 5 of 10: Theming Views — http://youtu.be/1Cfc11_sb5M
• Drupal: Theming Views — http://youtu.be/pg2AUZSQ85E

Performance: This section touches on-site configurations slightly as well.

• Overview of Drupal performance optimizations — http://youtu.be/rPL792OOgU0
• Optimizing Drupal Performance — http://youtu.be/52un4qSfDvY
• Drupal Performance & Scalability — http://youtu.be/07zslbit3-s
• Drupal Performance and Scalability Summary from Lullabot — http://youtu.be/6yZ52s3Wc6o

Security: Understanding how to handle text in Drupal securely and how to handle user input.

• DrupalCon Amsterdam 2014: Cracking Drupal — http://youtu.be/ZkNGObI4nlU

Just the video from DrupalCon Amsterdam is enough to understand how to Secure your Drupal site. However, here are some bonus videos

• Protect Your Drupal Site Against XSS Vulnerabilities [February 1, 2012] — http://youtu.be/WeVxE3B49E0
• Drupal Security Protect Against CSRF [May 15, 2012] — http://youtu.be/ZuL3uPC9jFw
• Training: Best Practices for Drupal Security [April 30, 2014] — http://youtu.be/Nzzuw_db6gQ

Tosimplify your life, you can head directly to these videos in YouTube that would help you understand Drupal theming. This is a two-part series which completely covers Drupal Theming.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc2c4bHHRZg
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXSvgiws7W0

Takeaway: “This exam made me realize my strengths and weaknesses around theming a Drupal website. “

chrisshattuck of Buildamodule has posted a video list that specifically targeted Theming https://www.drupal.org/node/1351116

If you are interested in being a regular Acquia Certified Drupal Developer, then you should refer to these beautiful guides produced by Angie (webchick) http://webchick.net/node/125 and my friend Tanay Sai http://www.tanay.co.in/blog/cracking-acquia-drupal-certification.html

Quoting Webchick about whether you need to take this exam ? “if you have a great track record of public contributions on Drupal.org, obviously no: your resume speaks for itself. But if you’ve been prevented by either personal or professional circumstances from having built up a robust D.o profile or client base over the years, this certification seems like a pretty solid way to get your foot in the door at a Drupal company.”

Issues / Concerns (not on the exam, but on the Tool used during the exam): Before closing this post, I need to give you guys a heads up on the weird issue I faced during this process of taking the exam online. Sentinel software had some problems with Yosemite OS, so I had to waste about an hour before taking this exam. I registered my bio-metric two days before my schedule and encountered no issues. However, on the exam day, bio-metric validation failed due to the software.

Update: To make it simple, I do have a YouTube Playlist; you can just watch all the necessary videos directly from here (or) by navigating to the YouTube website http://bit.ly/acquiafrontendcertification

Posted initially @ gobinath.com (Back in 2016) & yes, maybe this is still relevant for some.

Guide to Acquia Dr Front end Specialist Certification was originally published in Programmers Notebook on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sometimes, a developer might intentionally (or) unintentionally end up with a shallow GIT Repo. And this can be a pain for those who unintentionally end up with shallow Repo.

You need to unshallow your local Repo. Following these simple steps can help you out of this situation.

Step 1: You must update/fix your origin remote repo.
git remote add origin <path-to-old-remote>

Step 2: You would need to perform a git fetch with an unlike option (as suggested below)
git fetch — unshallow origin

Just these two steps would restore your repo to the normal state. After this, you can perform all options, like push into your new remote repository.

Initially, this was posted as a GIST @ https://gist.github.com/gobinathm/96e27a588bb447154604963e09c38ddc

Fixing a shallow GIT repo was originally published in Programmers Notebook on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.