What The Heck Is A Wizzy Wig?

​
OK, so I'm really going to write about WYSIWYG, not WIZZY WIG, two homophone phrases that are pronounced the same, but mean something completely different.  In the world of website content management systems (CMS), WYSIWYG is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get".  In practice, WYSIWYG is a system that allows you to see the content you are editing in the full context of its surrounding design.   

This is a Wizzy Wig

Many content management systems allow you to edit content in an editing window or frame that is detached from the page around it, so you don't actually see what your edits look like on the live website until you publish the changes and refresh the web page to see the changes.  This often leads to unpredictable results in the way the web page looks after you make edits.  Usually many rounds of changes are needed to get the page just how you want it.  ​

---

First let's look at a "non-WYSIWYG" website editor.

Below is a screenshot of a web page built with a popular NON-WYSIWYG CMS called WordPress.  Below the web page is a screen shot of the WordPress page that is used to edit the content for this page.  You can see how the CMS editor is NOT WYSIWYG.  You don't get to see what the page looks like until after you publish the changes.

Above is a web page on a WordPress (non-WYSIWYG) website.

Below shows the editor for the content on the page above. See the discrepancy between the editor and the final layout and design of the published page?  The editor does not accurately represent the way the final web page will look like.

---

Here's what a WYSIWYG editor looks like.

Below is a web page from a site built on our SMB Webworks platform.  

Below is that same web page being edited in the SMB Webworks WYSIWYG editor,  You can see that a WYSIWYG editor (below) allows you to edit directly the web page so your changes match what is published into the website. In the screen shot below, you can see the editing tools in the left sidebar. This makes web page editing much faster and more accurate.  All editing is done through a simple drag-and-drop interface that we train you how to use.