AEM Sites Architect Master study guide
AEM Sites Architect Master · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Adobe Certified Master - Adobe Experience Manager Sites Architect credential is Adobe's advanced, architect-level certification for practitioners who design and lead AEM Sites implementations rather than simply build components. It suits senior developers, technical leads, and solution architects who translate business requirements into a scalable AEM architecture, define component and template strategy, model content for both traditional and headless delivery, and make defensible decisions about deployment topology, caching, security, and governance. The AEM Sites Architect Master study guide has 10 sections and about 3,104 words.
01Solution Architecture and Requirements Analysis
Start every engagement by separating business requirements from technical ones and translating both into AEM capabilities. A candidate must be able to distinguish functional requirements (authoring workflows, multilingual delivery, personalization) from non-functional ones (performance budgets, availability, scalability, security posture).
303 words, about 2 min02AEM Sites Implementation and Component Architecture
Component architecture is the heart of Sites work. Understand the split between HTL (Sightly) templates, Sling Models, and client libraries, and why business logic belongs in models or services rather than in HTL.
293 words, about 1 min03Templates, Policies, and Editable Template Design
Editable templates separate structure from content and are the default for new Sites projects. A candidate must understand the three artifacts: the template definition (under /conf, referencing a template type), the template type (page component plus allowed components), and the policies (design properties stored per template).
331 words, about 2 min04Content Modeling, Content Fragments, and Experience Fragments
Content modeling is about designing reusable, channel-agnostic content. A candidate must distinguish content fragments (structured data defined by a content fragment model, delivered via API) from experience fragments (reusable layout and presentation, exported as HTML or delivered as components).
329 words, about 2 min05Integration, APIs, and Headless Delivery
Integration questions test whether you can choose the right API and secure it. A candidate must know the Sling Servlets and Sling Models exporters, the JSON exporter, the Assets HTTP API, and the GraphQL endpoint for content fragments.
333 words, about 2 min06Cloud Service and On-Premise Deployment, Environments, and DevOps
A candidate must understand the AEM as a Cloud Service model: the separation of code and content, the Cloud Manager pipeline, and the immutable, containerized publish and author tiers. Know the environment types (development, stage, production, and rapid development environments), the role of the repository and the content transfer tool, and how configuration as code (OSGi configs, run modes, Cloud Manager config pipelines) replaces manual console changes.
314 words, about 2 min07Performance, Caching, and Dispatcher Configuration
Performance questions combine caching strategy with Dispatcher rules. A candidate must understand the Dispatcher as a caching reverse proxy: cache rules, filter rules, and farm configuration.
306 words, about 2 min08Security, Users, Groups, and Permissions
Security in AEM rests on the Oak permission model. A candidate must understand users, groups, and the principal-based permission evaluation: allow and deny ACEs, the order of evaluation, and why deny takes precedence in practice.
303 words, about 2 min09Migration, Upgrade, and Multi-Site Management
Migration questions test planning and tooling knowledge. A candidate must understand the content transfer tool for moving content to Cloud Service, the pattern detector for identifying deprecated APIs, and the best-practice analyzer.
302 words, about 2 min10Troubleshooting, Governance, and Best Practices
Troubleshooting questions reward a systematic approach. A candidate must know where to look: logs (error.log, request.log, access.log), the OSGi console and bundle states, the Sling servlet resolution, and the dispatcher logs.
290 words, about 1 min