Release O’Plenty
Wow. What a release! If you haven’t noticed already, we’ve just pushed out one of the biggest releases in Zazzle history. Not only are we now doing real embroidery, but we’ve packed this release full of candy-coated goodness! Unfortunately, we’ve hit a couple performance snags, but we’re getting those resolved very quickly – keep your eye on the Zazzle Forums for updates on that front. For a quick overview, read our main blog post entitled Embroidery AND New Features. In this post, I’m going to get into some detail on some new features of the Zazzle Design Tool.
I’m such a tool(bar)
One of the first things you might notice is the look of our toolbar. We’ve reorganized it to show more options in a familiar menu style.
There are now Select, Edit, and Align options in the toolbar. These features help you select design elements, copy and paste them, and align them relative to each other. Next time you create something, check them out!
Also, if a product contains more than one design area (front and back of a t-shirt, multiple areas of a shoe, etc.) an Area selector appears on the left. This is a quick and easy way to select the different areas of a product to design on. And the best part is that now they contain easy to understand icons.
Oops, I messed up again
One thing a lot of people do is customize an existing design. You see a cool design and want to add your name, or you want to nudge the image a bit higher. If a contributor has allowed customization, anyone can do these things.
Of course, when you start messing around with a design, you may end up with something that doesn’t quite look like you pictured it. What to do?
REVERT! Yes, now there is an option to revert any design to its original state before you started changing things. Revert is located just under the Post for Sale button.
Templates made easy
So here’s the big one. The top banana. The Big Kahuna. El Jefe. Yes, ladies and gentlecontributors, we now have an easy way to make templates! Zoinks!
“You mean we don’t have to double-click somewhere and add cryptic brackets anymore?”
Correct. There is now a template UI!
You can make a product become a template by simply defining which image(s) or text object(s) can be replaced by the buyer.
Example:
Add an image to a product. You will notice an “Advanced options” link on the image object.
Click the Advanced options link to show all advanced options.
One of the options is a checkbox labeled “Make this a template object”. Checking that box will display all the options available for defining this template image placeholder.
When you select “Make this a template object”, you have access to four options:
- Product page label – This is the label that the customer will see on the product page. Use something descriptive here, like “Your picture” or “Your logo”.
- URL parameter name – If you are using the Zazzle API to pass data to this product from an external source, this is the parameter name the API will use. Avoid spaces or special characters. You can safely ignore this field if you are not working with the API (see the Zazzle API documentation for more information).
- Inner fit/fill mode – For images.If your template allows the buyer to replace your placeholder image with one of her own, this setting determines how the buyer’s image replaces yours. The options are none, fit, or fill.
none – If you set Inner fit/fill mode to none, the buyer’s image simply replaces your placeholder image, and may be larger or smaller than the placeholder.fit – Selecting fit will resize the buyer’s image to fit inside of your placeholder image object’s dimensions. This will ensure that their image is not cropped.
fill – Selecting fill will resize their image to fill the entire dimensions of your placeholder image. If the buyer’s image is wider or taller than your placeholder, this may result in zooming and cropping of the customer’s image. - Allow editing on product page – Keep this checked if you want to enable EZ Templates on your product page. Unchecking this option is usually only done when working with the Zazzle API.
Once you have filled out all the options, click Post for Sale. You are then presented with the normal Post it for Sale page. Notice the checkbox labeled “This product is a template”. This tells you that the product contains template objects, and that it will be posted for sale as a template. Only uncheck it if you decide at this point to not allow customer personalization of this product; otherwise keep it checked.
Congratulations! You have just created a template product!
Lock it up!
Sometimes, you may want to create a template product but have items that are not changeable by a customer. Now you can simply check the box labeled “Lock this image” or “Lock this text object”. This will essentially lock the item and not allow any editing of it whatsoever (can’t delete it, move it, resize it, etc.)
That’s all there is to it, folks!
