Acquia Site Factory Pro study plan
Acquia Site Factory Pro · Give each week a clear focus.
8 weeks · About 6 hours per week
Site Factory platform architecture and governance
Map the Site Factory platform layers - factory management layer, hosting stack, code base/upstream, and individual site instances - into a single diagram
Distinguish the responsibilities of the platform team versus site-owner roles in the governance model
Identify which settings are inherited from the factory level and which are configurable per site
Explain how site groups or organizational groupings are used to scale administration across many sites
Your checkpoint
A one-page annotated architecture diagram with at least 8 labeled components and a 10-row table classifying 10 settings as factory-wide or per-site
Site Factory platform architecture and governance & Site creation, cloning, and site lifecycle management
Describe the supported site creation paths and select the right one for a given business scenario
Outline the standard domain and SSL strategy for a multi-site portfolio, including wildcard versus custom domains
Draft the naming, group, and quota conventions a governance board would enforce before any site is provisioned
Trace the lifecycle of a site from request to retirement and list the governance gate at each stage
Your checkpoint
A governance policy document of at least 2 pages covering naming conventions, domain strategy, group structure, quotas, and a 5-stage lifecycle approval checklist
Site creation, cloning, and site lifecycle management
Sequence the steps for creating a new site from an upstream code base, including the pre-flight checks performed beforehand
Compare cloning/duplication options and decide when to copy content, users, and settings versus starting clean
Plan a site retirement that preserves backups and releases domains without breaking redirects
Identify which creation failures are recoverable by the site owner and which require platform escalation
Your checkpoint
A numbered provisioning runbook with 12 or more steps, including a pre-flight checklist and a rollback branch for failed creations
Site creation, cloning, and site lifecycle management & Site Factory platform architecture and governance
Rehearse describe-and-decide responses for site creation, cloning, and retirement scenarios under time pressure
Audit your architecture and governance notes for gaps against the exam objectives and fill the three weakest areas
Practice diagnosing a broken site lifecycle (duplicate domain, stuck clone, failed restore) from symptoms alone
Your checkpoint
A scored 40-question self-made practice set on domains 1 and 2, with written explanations for every miss and a score of at least 80%
Code deployment, updates, and environment workflow
Map the code path from a local repository through development, staging, and production environments to all factory sites
Explain how an upstream or code base update propagates to existing sites and what is deferred to a per-site update step
List the pre-deployment and post-deployment verification checks that must pass before an update is declared complete
Describe a rollback or hotfix procedure when a deployment breaks a subset of sites
Your checkpoint
A deployment pipeline diagram plus a pre/post deployment checklist of at least 15 verification items and a one-page rollback plan
Code deployment, updates, and environment workflow & User management, roles, and access control across sites
Compare strategies for updating many sites at once versus in controlled batches, and justify a batching policy
Identify the artifacts and configuration that must never be modified directly in a production environment
Contrast environment-level permissions with per-site permissions to explain who can deploy where
Your checkpoint
A written update-batching policy that assigns sites to waves with rationale, plus a change-freeze and hotfix decision tree
User management, roles, and access control across sites
Enumerate the user personas across a factory and assign each the minimum viable role and permission set
Describe how accounts and authentication are shared or federated across the factory and its individual sites
Plan an access review that removes stale site-level permissions without disrupting site owners
Explain how to troubleshoot a user who can log in to the factory but cannot reach a specific site
Your checkpoint
A role-permission matrix covering at least 6 personas against 8 permissions, with a 6-step access-review procedure and a troubleshooting flow for access failures
Site Factory platform architecture and governance & Site creation, cloning, and site lifecycle management & Code deployment, updates, and environment workflow & User management, roles, and access control across sites
Synthesize all four domains into cross-cutting scenarios such as onboarding a new site with its own team and deploy cadence
Re-drill the two domains with the lowest practice scores using spaced retrieval rather than rereading
Simulate the full exam under timed conditions and review every incorrect answer for root cause
Your checkpoint
A timed 60-question mixed mock exam scored at least 85%, plus a one-page personal error log listing recurring mistake patterns and the fix for each
Milestones
Week 2: Can explain factory versus site responsibilities and the full site lifecycle without notes, and has produced the governance policy document
Week 4: Scores at least 80% on the 40-question domains 1-2 practice set and can walk through a provisioning runbook end to end from memory
Week 6: Can describe the complete code deployment and update propagation path, and justify an update batching policy in under five minutes
Week 8: Scores at least 85% on the timed 60-question mixed mock exam with no domain below 75%