Seeking Guidance to Learn and Start Working with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)

[VimalRa1]

Hi,

My name is Vimal, and I am currently working as a MEAN Stack Developer. I’m very enthusiastic about transitioning into Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) development, as I find its powerful capabilities in content management and digital experience delivery truly inspiring.

I'm writing to kindly seek your guidance on how I can get started with AEM.

While I'm passionate and eager to learn, I’m facing a few challenges:

In my region, very few organizations have access to Adobe Experience Platform, which makes hands-on experience difficult to obtain.

I’m unsure how to access the necessary base files, such as AEM author/publish JARs for local setup and development.

I would be grateful if you could let me know:

If Adobe provides student programs, developer sandboxes, or trial licenses specifically for learning or self-paced development.

Where can I download AEM JAR files for local use?

How to set up a basic AEM environment for learning purposes.

Are there any official documentation or training resources you'd recommend?

I’m truly excited to begin this journey and contribute to AEM-based projects in the future. Your support or direction toward the right resources would mean a lot to me.

Thank you so much for your time and assistance!

[Asheesh_Pandey]

@VimalRa1 moved it from AEP to AEM community.

[lukasz-m · Accepted solution]

Hi @VimalRa1,

Unfortunately Adobe is not providing AEM direct public demo or trial version for download.

Of course you can still try to contact Adobe sales, and ask for trial license - https://business.adobe.com/request-consultation.html

Regarding documentation and learning materials, I would suggest below sources:

• official AEM documentation - https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager
• AEM WKND tutorial - https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-learn/getting-started-wknd-tutorial-de... - it describes some fundamental aspects related to AEM project implementation
• AEM official tutorials - https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-tutorials
• in below post you can also find some options you could explore without having access to AEM, as in general AEM is build on top of few open source solutions like Apache Sling, knowledge about this is useful for any AEM developer - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/samuel-fawaz_adobeexperiencemanager-aem-aemaacs-activity-711772103724...

Last but not least feel free to share any question(s) in this community, there are many excellent specialist here, that will help you with basic and more advanced topics.

Good luck with your first steps in AEM word 🙂