Drupal CMS

Getting started

Onboarding overview

By using Drupal-powered Acquia CMS, you can manage your digital content and experiences. Acquia provides reference and training material, and facilitates a smooth onboarding in Acquia CMS for all customers.

For information about using Acquia CMS for your onboarding needs, see:

Onboarding resources

The following resources are available to support you during your onboarding:

Planning for success

Acquia has identified that successful Acquia CMS implementations have alignment across the project team and organization. Acquia suggests that you identify personnel for the following roles:

  • Executive Sponsor: Provides the vision and acts as the primary stakeholder for the success of the Acquia CMS implementation.

  • Project Manager: Facilitates and tracks the progress of the implementation, and acts as the primary point of contact.

  • Acquia CMS Administrator: Performs Acquia CMS administrative functions. This includes defining permissions, system preference, and data structure.

  • Marketing Subject Matter Expert: Defines the page layout and visual design, configures reusable components, and ensures that branding standards are adhered to.

  • Technical Subject Matter Expert: Assists with authentication, setup, or other technical implementation details.

Customer preparation

The Acquia CMS onboarding process is effective if you:

  • Have an understanding of pattern-based component design: Designers and developers might want to enroll in training related to the design-pattern library approach to application development. For more information, see Acquia Academy.

  • Can articulate your goals for using Acquia CMS: If you know why you are implementing Acquia CMS, and what business challenges you want to solve, project planning goes smoothly.

  • Have defined success metrics: Having clear, measurable, and universally understood criteria helps all parties to measure and articulate success of the platform.

  • Get trained and certified: You can identify project participants, developers, site builders, and account administrators who need access to the Acquia CMS onboarding resources. Various certifications are available for developers and site builders. For more information, see Acquia Certification Study Guides.

  • Have Drupal skills: Acquia CMS simplifies Drupal development. Therefore, to use Acquia CMS effectively, advanced Drupal skills are helpful but not required. These skills are necessary for projects that extend or customize beyond the default Acquia CMS profile. Drupal skills include content editing, site building, CSS and HTML, layout, theming, and custom module development.

Additional support

Acquia offers support and engagements for those seeking additional individual instruction and guidance with their Acquia CMS development, including:

  • Acquia CMS leverages Site Studio.

    • To learn how to use Site Studio as part of your implementation, you can refer to the Site Studio e-learning material in Acquia Academy.

    • For information about Site Studio features, see Site Studio documentation.

  • Acquia Technical Account Managers (TAM) provide you with guidance, best practices, training, and recommendations. Optionally, they can offer consultation about the general creation, deployment, and operation of websites using Acquia CMS. This is in addition to Drupal expertise. For more information, see Technical Account Managers.

  • Acquia Professional Services engagements provide you support if you need additional enablement when starting with Acquia CMS. For more information, see Professional Services Product Guide.