There are a couple of courses that I would like to share that have really helped me, not just in interviews, but also in my daily AEM development regime. In my opinion, I think these are the best courses for anyone who is either getting started as an AEM developer or who is already working as an AEM developer for more than 2+ years. Even right now, today, since I started my AEM career in 2015, this course by far has really helped me by re-aligning AEM concepts and AEM development practices that are not in my every AEM development cycle. At the bottom of this article, take a look at the reasons how this course helped me.
I believe any AEM developers at any level will benefit from these courses.
I put together a course roadmap, step by step, that you should follow, to really help you learn. You should step through each and every course from 1…the-end-of-the-table-of-contents; I recommend this order. All these courses are offered by Plural Sight. Plural Sightly is a paid company that offers online video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals. If you subscribe to their training services, you will obtain more than just the courses I am listing below.
I did have a look at the udemy.com AEM courses. From my analysis, the udemy.com courses do not provide the same level of detail as the Plural Sight’s online training videos; udemy.com provides extremely high-level concepts with training material that does not include too many follow-me-code tutorials. So, I really appreciate the content that Plural Sight is offering, and it will really help any level of AEM developers refresh or upgrade their skills. If you use Plural Sight, you will not only get access to every AEM course listed below, but other technical courses that suits your needs.
- 1. Fundamentals of Building from Projects in AEM
- 2. Fundamentals of Extending Adobe Experience Manager – Backend
- 3. Develop Websites and Components in Adobe Experience Manager
- 4. Develop Websites and Components in Adobe Experience Manager Advanced
- 5. Extending Adobe Experience Manager Advanced
- 6. Introduction & Advanced Dialogs with Granite UI
- 7. AEM Building Full Stack Components
- Additional Resources
- How this course helped me
1. Fundamentals of Building from Projects in AEM
Course Length: (3.5hrs)
This course will teach you how to build and debug Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) packages and how you can use them to import and export content to and from AEM’s Java Content Repository (JCR.) Software required: Adobe Experience Manager, Maven.
This course includes learning of:
- Fundamentals of building projects in AEM
- Pushing code and content into AEM with import and export
- Building AEM projects with Maven
- Understanding Maven pom.xml
- Setting up IDE environments like IntelliJ and Eclipse
- Enable AEM for debug mode with IntelliJ or Eclipse
- Understanding what is happening with code and content is built in AEM
- Working with the content package manager and content packages via filters
- Fundamentals of OSGI cofigurations
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/aem-fundamentals-building-projects
2. Fundamentals Extending Adobe Experience Manager – Backend
Course Length: (2hrs)
This course is extending #1 Fundamentals of Building from Projects in AEM. This course is ideal for backend developers and focuses on developing services, servlets, and jobs in AEM. This course is retired, but it does have some concepts that I think AEM developers should understand.
This course includes learning of:
- What exactly is AEM
- Introduction of the OSGI Framework
- Introduction to the Java Content Repository (JCR)
- Introduction to Apache Sling
- Introduction to Granite UI (Touch UI)
- Installing AEM Locally
- Introduction to AEM Run modes
- Introduction to AEM Package Manager
- Introduction to OSGI Services (backend)
- Introduction to AEM Configuration
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/extending-aem-foundations
3. Develop Websites and Components in Adobe Experience Manager
Course Length: (3.5hrs)
This course will teach you the basics for developing websites using AEM, including structure component development, understanding Apache Sling and the JCR, and using HTL.
This course includes learning of:
- The architecture and overview of AEM and it’s technical stack
- Concepts of JCR and Apache Sling
- Development tools in AEM; like CRX/DE
- Introduction to AEM JCR
- Introduction to AEM content rendering
- Basic AEM templates
- Basic AEM content & structure components with Sightly
- Basic AEM component inheritance
- Basic AEM touch UI
- Basic AEM design dialog
- Basic AEM logging
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/develop-websites-components-aem
4. Develop Websites and Components in Adobe Experience Manager Advanced
Course Length: (3.5hrs)
This course teaches you the advanced methods for developing websites, including using AEM’s responsive grid, advanced content component development, debugging, and testing.
In this course, I recommend to skip the “Using Brackets for Developmment”, because this IDE is not as efficient than Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ, in my opinion.
This course includes learning of:
- Introduction of response design in AEM
- Introduction of the responsive grid layout
- Introduction of response design in AEM
- AEM sling selectors with components
- Handling AEM 404 error pages
- AEM sling redirects
- AEM translations via internalization (i18n)
- Touch UI dialogs
- Creating AEM Component with intermediate concepts
- Creating AEM Component with advanced concepts
- Concepts for AEM client libraries
- Client Libraries
- Backend Core: JCR Search API
- Frontend asynchronous development with AEM components
- Testing and debugging AEM components
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/develop-websites-components-aem-advanced
5. Extending Adobe Experience Manager Advanced
Course Length: (6hrs)
This course is an extension of #4, developing AEM websites and components (advanced). This course includes advanced methods for developing websites, including using AEM’s backend offerings like: content migration, AEM Workflows, OSG backend services and servlets, and unit testing.
This course includes learning of:
- Configuration of your development environemnt
- OSGI Overview and Deep Dive
- OSGI advanced concepts like annotations, bundle activator, create and use custom services, code OSGI configurations
- Deep dive into the Apache Sling Framework
- Concepts of Sling Architecture, system users, sling servlets, sling resolution process
- Backend event handling
- Advanced concepts for the JCR
- JCR Model, event handling, observation listener
- Search: configuration of indexes, using AEM indexing tools, and query synax
- Search: creation of an AEM search servlet
- Polling importers
- AEM Workflows: workflow models, workflow steps, workflow launchers
- Programically create pages and assets in AEM
- Programically creating a website in AEM
- Unit testing with JUNIT for AEM backend
- Understanding AEM content ingestion and migration
- User permissions and groups
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/extending-aem-advanced
6. Introduction & Advanced Dialogs with Granite UI
Course Length: (2hrs)
This course will teach you to build AEM dialogs & custom AEM dialogs, including Granite UI, understand dialog node structure, apply input validation, and tracing input back to AEM’s JCR.
This course includes learning of:
- Introduction of Granite UI
- Understanding the Granite UI documentation
- Understanding the Granite UI on the server
- Granite UI containers, layout, and multifield items
- Migration from Coral2 to Coral3
- Follow-me, building tab Granite UI components
- Granite UI form fields such as checkbox, dropdown, etc…
- Advanced Granite UI with custom Javascript validations
- Introduction to Datasources
- Follow-me, Datasource lists with ACS Commons
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/adobe-experience-manager-advanced-dialogs-granite-ui
7. AEM Building Full Stack Components
Course Length: (2hrs)
Learn to leverage AEM’s rendering lifecycle to architect solutions based on designs. You’ll work with components, editable templates, and page properties to build content structures that are returned as JSON from an API endpoint.
This course includes learning of:
- AEM Full Stack development introduction
- Translating designs into AEM components
- Building AEM Components from HTML Mockups
- Static and Editable templates
- Building an API Endpoint to Handle AJAX requests
- Sling Servlets, Query Builder, and JSON
- AEM components tying to backend servlets
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/aem-building-full-stack-components
Additional Resources
After completing all the steps above, enhance your learning with other training and resources on the web, specifically for AEM.
Adobe Experience Manager Forums – This is a platform created by Adobe to provide AEM knowledge to the public. This includes a community forum where AEM developers can share ideas, discuss problems, find new AEM technical blog articles, and much more. You can learn a lot here by reading about problems and how they are solved. This is a community that I stand by, and commit my own ideas, help answer AEM technical questions, and participate. https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-experience-manager-blogs/bg-p/adobe-experience-manager-blogs
More Video Training Series
These are free online video training materials that the AEM community and I find very useful for learning & reviewing AEM development practices. If you run through the entire playlist for each and every Youtube video playlist below, you should be reinforced, moving your way up to a best-in-class, AEM developer.
- AEM Geeks – Strengthening your learning by reviewing AEMGEEKS’s youtube AEM series, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEaEQSM_Y4tmJjQICTFDm2lU5mNmd_Oar. AEMGeeks really did a great job by sharing full-stack AEM topics and should provide more knowledge.
- SG AEM – This youtube channel offers easy-to-understand AEM full-stack web development tutorials that can help you fine-tune your AEM skills. https://www.youtube.com/c/SGAEM/playlists
How this course helped me
- Prepare for interviews. Before jumping into technical interviews, I would go all of the courses at 2x the speed. These courses help me review all the major technicalities of AEM. I would just watch all the videos starting from the fundamentals of building AEM web components & services to advanced concepts and practices.
- During my daily work regime, this course helped me re-align my AEM concepts and coding practices. After watching the videos, I understood exactly what AEM-specific technologies I was trying to re-align and was able to immediately start putting my knowledge the practice.
- The easy-to-follow and understanding courses include the entire AEM technical stack, which refreshes my learning for AEM sites; regarding AEM sightly components, OSGI configurations, editable templates, touch UI, and more.
Brian, you are always great! thanks for putting in the time to write this article for new / seasoned AEM developers! Well respected!
Thanks, Tom, those are really kind words!
Hey B. thanks for doing this. Articles like this are so valuable!
Thanks, Kevin, I always try to push out AEM content that will benefit my readers, and I am glad that you like it! Thanks for visiting my website 🙂
Hi Brian, would you suggest me to get my own plural sight account or should I ask my company to get one for us? Plural Sight seems valuable in my opinion. But this course looks costly.
Hi David, yes you can ask your company if they can subscribe to a PluralSight membership, but however, even if they don’t, I believe if you try the 10-day trial, you’ll realize what you need, and what you don’t need. In my opinion, if you decide to take the courses, it will really take you off to the next level, and a little personal investment will come a long way! Don’t forget to checkout the #additional-resources section.
Hey brian, my company says no, so I will invest in myself. even after 2 years as an AEM developer, this course is really helping me. I am trying the free trial to your suggested course and I am learning a lot. Thanks for replying to me on Linkedin too. VERY GOOD!
Hey David, I am glad that you decided to take the leap to consider this course as your personal investment. Yeah it’s actually a really good course. Even myself, before I go into technical interviews or jump back into the code, I would watch videos 2x the speed. It really help me reiterate my knowledge for core concepts of AEM. I am glad that you took the chance on the course… it’s very worth it. 35$ USD a month for maybe 2 months will increase your salary by 20-30% for sure! Let me know how it goes. In my opinion, you will never be a great AEM developer if you only know the backend or frontend; you must be a fullstack AEM developer. This course will help you be a full fledged AEM developer!
I had trouble finding a good course to help me become a better AEM developer, but your post, Brian, made it much easier for me. Your guidance led me to the right training path and I am so appreciative. Thank you for taking the time to help me out.
Hey Sadiya, make sure you take a look at the additional resources section for more self-learning after you have completed the PluralSight course.
Brian, I just wanted to give you an update on my recent achievements. I am proud to say that I have completed all the courses within the past month, which was a huge accomplishment for me. Additionally, I had an interview and I am happy to report that it went extremely well. I was able to showcase my knowledge and answer all of the questions with ease. As an AEM developer with 3 years of experience, these experiences have been invaluable in preparing me for my future endeavors. Thank you for recommending courses!
Hey @Timmothy, congrats on successfully passing your interview. Please continue learning under the “additional resources” section. https://sourcedcode.com/blog/aem/aem-developers-courses-2022-that-really-helped-me?utm_source=sourcedcode.com&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=top#additional=resources
The courses may not cover all AEM backend services or frontend implementations, but they gave me a solid understanding of the various AEM implementation methods. I took three months to complete the courses, and revisited some of them for reinforcement.
It’s great that you found value in the PluralSight Course. Yeah, I understand that the PluralSight course does not cover all AEM backend services or frontend, however, it does put you in a really good position interns of the overall knowledge of AEM, and this course should gear you up for AEM 6.5 and AEMaaCS.
Your support means a lot to me and I am grateful for all that you have done! Thanks.
My pleasure!
I tried the free trial and then bought a one-month premium course. It was really helpful and taught me a lot.
@Sharmin, thanks for the feedback. Always remember, rather than just learning on the job, set aside some time to continue to learn. AEM is always evolving.
I finished the course and want to share my experience. The guide Brian recommended helped me greatly in my AEM studies. I suggest giving it a try, it’s free to determine if it’s suitable for you.
Thanks for the great feedback Mohammed!
Thanks for the suggestion, Brian! After the 10-day trial, I have decided to move forward with purchasing the course. So far so good. Also thank you or all the blog articles, the time you have put in this website to help the AEM community!
You’re absolutely welcomed! Thanks for the great feedback.
Thanks for the recommendation, Brian! I’ve decided to purchase the course after the 10-day trial, and so far, everything is looking good.
I appreciate the feedback, thanks!
Hey Brian! Curious about one thing is this path suitable for a newbie who is from a non IT background who wish to become an AEM developer
Hi Vicky, from the gecko, like for a non-IT person, I would suggest.
Unfortunately, with non-IT experience, you cannot just jump straight into AEM. You need to understand the fundamentals of web development and data structures & algoritems before you can proceed.
I took the courses during the weekend and its okay.
I am glad that you have tried out the course!
Gee, thanks this really helped me for ramping up.
thanks for the feedback!
I finished all the courses within 2 months. The instructors on PS was really insightful, Thank you for recommending!
thanks for the feedback!
Really great, you’re the best Brian! Thanks for sharing
I found the courses really useful, so I had to leave down my comments. Thank you sir!
Thanks for the feedback, I am glad that I can help.
I admire your efforts, thank you for sharing these course recommendations. I am more confident in my effort to work as an AEM FS developer. Cheers man.
This course is still relevant, great thank you!