The Basics

Arcadier Marketplaces Have Three Web Portals

On every marketplace created on the Arcadier’s platform, there are three associated user roles, all with different permissions, interfaces (web portals), and user accessibility within the marketplace namely: Administrator, Merchant, and Buyer.

The Roles:

1. Administrator - The owner of the marketplace who has created the marketplace on the Arcadier Platform and manages its overall operations. The Administrator access the marketplace through the Administrator (Admin) Portal. 
2. Merchant (Seller) - The seller on the marketplace who is invited to sell their products or services on the marketplace by the administrator and manages their inventory via the Merchant Portal. 
3. Buyer (Consumer) - The people making purchases from the merchants on the marketplace, who make their purchases via the marketplace website. 

Each marketplace has at least one Marketplace Administrator (Admin), and a limitless number of Merchants and Buyers. The owner of the marketplace is an Admin and has the power to promote other users to become Admins.

The Admin Portal can only be accessed by the Marketplace Administrators, and it controls the entire marketplace - it allows Marketplace Administrators to set up payment gateways, categories, google analytics, email notifications and more. Additionally, the Admin Portal allows the Administrator to access all user accounts that are registered on the Marketplace - both Merchants and Consumers. The Administrators can also choose which plug-ins (Public or Private) to install onto the marketplace and is responsible for paying for paid plug-ins.

Image: The Admin Portal

The two other user portals available on Arcadier’s platform, the Merchant Portal and the Buyer Portal

• The Merchant Portal allows sellers on the marketplace to upload and edit product or service listings, manage the status of orders placed by buyers, keep track of sold items, add delivery or pick-up options for order fulfillment, and more.

• The Buyer Portal allows consumers in the marketplace to browse the product or service listings, and make purchases. Every user can be a buyer, but buyer accounts do not have any of the Merchant or Admin permissions. A plug-in may be designed to work only if a buyer is registered on a marketplace and not if the buyer searches and shops on the marketplace anonymously as a guest. That is the level of flexibility of the Arcadier APIs. 

Image: The Merchant Portal

Image: The Buyer (Consumer) Portal

Difference between Live and Sandbox Marketplaces

Sandbox Marketplaces can be created by anyone for free, regardless if you are already part of Arcadier’s developer community or just want to try out Arcadier’s APIs on your own. It is recommended that all developers create a sandbox marketplace account for testing. On Arcadier’s platform, there are both Sandbox and Live marketplaces. 

Live and sandbox marketplaces have the same feature; except that sandboxes are specifically for developer testing and are free to use. Live transactions on a Sandbox Marketplace are disabled and Arcadier wipes all data and deletes Sandbox Marketplaces created 60 days from registration. 

A Sandbox Marketplace is perfect for testing because it allows for all the necessary functionalities of our Live Marketplaces except for live transactions and payments. Because of this and with the fact that its free, you can afford to break the marketplace while testing customisations. Once you have created a Sandbox Marketplace, you will receive your Client ID & Secret for that marketplace, and that will allow you to authenticate and test Arcadier’s APIs. One way to do customisations with your sandbox is to write your code in the Custom Code tab found in the “Advanced” tab in the sidebar. 

If you want to develop higher level and more complex features for Arcadier’s marketplaces, you will receive a Sandbox Developer’s Dashboard on which you will be able to upload your source codes (including PHP files) and manage them. To register for a Sandbox Developer’s Dashboard, find out more here.

Image: Arcadier Developer Dashboard

The difference between having a developer dashboard to upload your customisations, and doing customisations straight from the “Custom Code” tab, is that the Admin has no access to the source code uploaded via the dashboard.

In both cases, it is essential to have a Sandbox Marketplace as a dummy marketplace to test your customizations before deciding to build for live marketplaces. You can also choose to incorporate the Marketplace Populator Plug-In onto your Marketplace to avoid the strenuous creation test data (users, categories, test transactions and items) to do various testings. This plug-in can also be used as an example of what plug-ins can do with our current APIs. The sample code for this plug-in can be found here. 

Create your Sandbox Marketplace

It is free to create a Sandbox Marketplace and we strongly recommend all developers to have their own sandbox marketplace created before upgrading to Growth, Scale or Enterprise Packages for APIs on their live marketplace. All sandbox marketplaces have API access and are free to use, they are only disabled for Live payments and have 60 days access, after which the sandbox marketplace and all data will be wiped clean.