October 2006

Using the WYSIWYG Editor

WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get,” and means that what you see on screen while you are editing your content is how the content will appear in the final product. This makes authoring web pages a lot easier and gives you much more control over the appearance of your website by allowing for easy editing of product and category descriptions or adding articles to your site. The editor also allows for image upload and easily placing links. MightyMerchant would like to add one important caveat to using the WYSIWYG editor, however: with the freedom the editor allows it is easy to get carried away and over-format. We recommend keeping it simple and going easy on the fancy effects. More is sometimes too much!

Here is an example of the WYSIWYG editor:

With the WYSIWYG editor, you can add text styles, create bulleted and number lists, insert tables, and do several other formatting techniques.
There are some compatibility issues with using this WYSIWYG editor, meaning that if you use a non-supported browser the editing functions won’t work.

The MightyMerchant Site Manager works with these web browsers:

For Windows:
Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox

For Macintosh:
Firefox only

The user side of MightyMerchant works with a much broader range of web browsers, but due to some of the editing features included in the MightyMerchant Site Manager, we only support the above freely available browsers.

Please keep your web browser updated to the latest available version. Security holes are continually being discovered in web browsers and web vendors frequently release updates to plug them up.

Please visit our documentation site at http://docs.mightymerchant.com/ if you have questions about how to use the Site Manager.

Streaming Video Options

Streaming media is a great development because with streaming video or streaming audio, the files are sent in compressed form over the Internet and are playable in almost real time. With other types of media, a Web user has to wait to download a large file before viewing or hearing it. With streaming media, the image is played as it arrives.

As Internet technology has evolved in the past few years and the large web content providers have invested in the equipment and infrastructure necessary to serve huge quantities of data, many compelling options have become available to serve streaming video at little or no cost.

Large corporations like Google, Yahoo! and MSN offer video streaming for no direct cost. MightyMerchant can now make it easy for you to link to streaming video being served from Google Video and YouTube. Here is what you would need to do:

A video clip or product demonstration can be a great enhancement to your website.

MightyMerchant is always evaluating ways we can better integrate with emergent web technologies in an effort to meet our customer’s needs in every way possible. Please let us know if you have any questions about adding streaming video to your site or integrating other advanced functionalities.

Youngbloood said he’s not naturally a risk taker, and leaving his job to start an online business was a gamble. “ I wasn’t ready to put the house mortgage on the line in order to open a brick-and-mortar store, so I wanted to be web-based and work out of the home at first,” he said. One of the first things he had to do was locate a web service provider to help him build a web store. Even though he had built some pretty substantial websites during his time at Emory, he didn’t feel qualified to tackle that job by himself. “I spent several months just talking to different web service providers and hosts and doing research and checking references,” Youngblood explained. His final decision came down to the friendly, helpful service he found in our staff. “MightyMerchant … stuck out as having the most responsive and friendly customer service people that I was dealing with. A lot of the other larger companies that I spoke with, they just didn’t have the same personal touch that Datahost had at the time.” He found a lot of people making promises that they weren’t able to deliver on, even in terms of something as simple as calling back when they said they would, or providing price quotes.
Lead Designer Kathy Smith worked with Youngblood to get his site ready for business, and he found her help invaluable. “I needed this website to do two things because my business had two parts,” he said. “I needed it to promote my local stringing business, so I needed it to get out the information about those services because that’s really the bread and butter services, and then I needed an online store so that I could get products out there for people to purchase.”

Guts and Glory has continued to grow since those early days. “We started out with nothing when we put the website up,” he remembers. It did take a while to get into the search engines, which is typical, but since he was “found,” he’s noticed good results and steadily climbing sales. “Without the help of MightyMerchant, that wouldn’t be happening, because I would have never known to do search engine optimization,” he said, hitting on an element of web design that is essential these days. Another feature Youngblood appreciates is the flexible software. “It lets me alter and change or do whatever I need to do,” he said. “And when I can’t figure out what I need to do I can send an e-mail or a phone call to the support people or to Kathy and it gets taken care of very quickly. It’s something that you just won’t find with other companies. As a customer, you feel like they’re in it with you and you know that they’re working hard.”


Part of Youngblood’s vision for his site was to draw traffic to the site without the intention of selling anything, to build a community of users. “We created a section of the site that we call “Court Jester,” where we just post fun satire and humorous stories, and I get a lot of comments about those pages.” He’s the first to admit that as business has grown he’s had less time to post new material, but “Court Jester” is one piece of the website that’s unique and he plans to keep it going.

Another important aspect of his site that customers tell him they enjoy are the humorous touches sprinkled throughout. Many Guts and Glory customers comment on how fun and light the site is. Some even browse through just to read the item descriptions. "We have intentionally tried to make many of our descriptions fun and informative. Humor is a tool we attempt to use to make our site stand out from the other more 'corporate' sites," he said. "Down home, professional and fun is what we are trying to accomplish. I think we are getting close."

Youngblood said choosing MightyMerchant has been a great business decision, “and one I would never change!”

Thanks John!