To sell products, offer services, post inquiries, or add any form of listing requires a user account. User accounts are created in your marketplace. Both the demand side (what we call customers) and the supply side (what we call providers) need to create user accounts eventually. In this tutorial, we’ll focus on creating a provider account and posting a listing to test how the experience works and what we may want to change.
You can also find a video version of the full tutorial on testing your Sharetribe marketplace.
Sign up as a user
You can create test users on your Test marketplace. You can access your marketplace through Console by clicking “View marketplace” in the Console top bar.
In your Test marketplace, navigate to the signup page by clicking “Sign up” in the top bar.
An account created on your marketplace website is different from the account you use to login to Console. The former is an account for using your marketplace website as a customer or a provider, while the latter Console account is your operator account, which is used to configure and administer your marketplace.
Fill the signup details
On the signup page, choose your user type if you have them enabled. You can modify or create user types later.
Next, enter the requested details. At minimum, this includes:
Email
First name
Last name
Password
You can use any name or email you like. You can use the same email you used to create your Sharetribe Console account, since the user account you are creating now is separate from the account you use to log in to Console.
You will likely need to log in to this test account again while you build and run your marketplace. You can save the credentials to your password manager but also easily log in as the user through the Console.
Check “I accept the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy” (we will learn about editing those later) and click “Sign up”.
If you don’t want to receive email notifications for test accounts in your email inbox, you can use the domain@example.com address for test accounts. example.com is a domain specifically meant for general use in documentation or test configurations. For example, you could create an account using provider@example.com as the email address.
Verify email
Once you create a user account, you need to confirm your email address. You will receive an email with a link to confirm your email address. Pressing the link in the email confirms your email.
Back in Console, where you have admin rights, you can verify emails for users as well. This function allows you to enable a smooth user experience if they are having trouble finding the verification email. Here is how to do it:
Navigate to Console > Test environment > Manage > Users. You’ll see a row for the user you just created
Press on the row. You’ll see details about the user.
Press on the three dots menu
Press “Verify email”
Confirm
Whichever way you confirm the email, the user account is now verified to start testing the marketplace.
Next steps
With a user account, we can create our first listing! The next tutorial is about how to create a listing.