Text box as a template or not?

[HoBiNi]

Hi there, 

After adding the text box for personalization, do I have to make a template or not?. Both ways seem to work after posting the product.

Thanks for your reply. Holmer

[NigelSutherland]

Yes, you have to make it a template so that anyone visiting the page can alter the text as they wish.

"Both ways" work for you because YOU'RE the creator and therefore whatever you create can be edited by you.

[HoBiNi]

Thank you for your answer

[ColsCreations · Accepted solution]

Checkout this post I made back in February. 
Will it even be necessary to set up text as template fields anymore? Thoughts?

The lighter example is the most thought provoking I think.
If you specifically set a field as template text, when a shopper clicks to Personalize, it automatically opens to the "Edit" panel which contains only text that has been set as a template. The "Add Text" panel lists any other text that was not set as a template. Either way, both can easily be edited.
However, if you don't set any of your text as a template, when a User clicks to edit the design, it automatically opens to the 'Add text' panel. There is no "Edit" panel. Despite Zazzle's wording on the two panels, this is IMO actually simpler and less confusing because all the editable text is listed in one place. Which begs the original question - what is the point of setting text as a template when it can so easily be edited anyway?

*NOTE: Even if you don't set any text as a template field, the Edit panel will still be there (and be the default the customer sees when clicking to personalize) if you have any image templates. The existence of any template field produces the Edit panel. So if you're doing a design that's all about customizing the text rather than replacing the imagery, the need to set text specifically as a template becomes very questionable.