Recently I reviewed a lot of custom Facebook pages for my PC World article, 14 Creative Ways to Use Facebook Pages. I found a couple of problems with a number of pages that need to be addressed or hopefully the page owners pan to resolve.

These issues relate to the deprecation of Static FBML and the SSL requirement that was implemented October 2011.

The Issues

Static FBML

Facebook ended support for Static FMBL on January 1, 2012 and Static FBML apps will stop working completely June 2012. There is four months until Static FBML stops working so there is time to make the transition but I was surprised by how many custom pages are still using Static FBML and haven’t yet transitioned to iFrames or a 3rd party page application. I hope that the page owners have a plan for the transition. One concern is that Facebook doesn’t have a great method of sharing information about these changes and that the page owners might not be aware that these changes need to be made. Personally, I contacted everyone I’ve done Facebook work with, told them about the changes to Static FBML and helped them make the transition. If you need assistance with this, please contact me.

SSL Requirement

In October 2011, Facebook started requiring an SSL certificate for all Facebook apps. This included custom pages made with iFrames as they are setup like a Facebook application. I discussed how a free SSL certificate could be set up with Social Server and with the web host Hostgator.

I encountered a lot of iFrame page applications that were not following the SSL requirement and instead of seeing the custom page I saw an error message. Honestly, it looks unprofessional and it’s better to remove the custom page then have one that can’t be viewed due an error message.

If you are not logged into Facebook securely, you may see the page that isn’t using SSL but you should be logged in securely and all pages should be following this requirement. And I didn’t just see these errors on small pages – huge companies had these errors too.

If you are not logging into Facebook securely, here are instructions on how to do that.

If you are still using Static FBML and not using SSL for your custom page, please make the changes. If you are going to have a custom Facebook page, it’s best if it is as professional as possible.

If you need assistance with your Facebook page, please contact me.

photo credit: rsdio

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Problems with Many Custom Facebook Pages

My 3rd article for PC World, 14 Creative Ways to User Facebook Business Pages, was published earlier this week.

This article is a slideshow presentation of Facebook pages that are doing something a little different with their Facebook pages, such as using staff book reviews for a library page or using videos for customer testimonials.

I thought preparing images and captions for a slideshow would be easier than writing a super long article but it really wasn’t. I went through a lot of pages to locate these 14 examples. I even sent out pleas for examples but didn’t really get a response. ;-)

I hope the slideshow gives you ideas for your own business page and that you find it useful.

Earlier articles:

• How to Promote and Maintain Your Facebook Business Page
• How to Make a Facebook Page for Your Small Business

photo credit: llowrain

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Creative Ways to Use Facebook Business Pages – PC World Article

I’m looking for your help.

I’m working on an article that will feature custom Facebook pages that are being used in creative or unique ways.

Please leave your links in the comments. If for any reason you don’t want to leave a link in the comments, you can send it to me via my contact form.

And, it is very possible that your link / Facebook page would be featured in a major publication (not that this site isn’t major but WAY bigger ;-)

Thanks in advance for your help!

photo credit: moonrat

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Looking for Examples of Unique and Creative Custom Facebook Pages

Facebook’s new timeline layout is available. If you don’t already have it, you can get it on the About Timeline page. Facebook says it will be rolled out to all users on December 22nd. Either not many people have switched or people like timeline because my news stream has not been filled with people complaining about the new layout and threatening to leave Facebook forever. ;-)

I’ve found it easy enough to edit and remove content but I could not figure out how to edit the boxes to the right of the basic info about me and just below the cover photo. A friend of mine on Facebook cleared that up so I thought I would share it here, if anyone else was having trouble with this.

To the right of the 4 boxes is a number. Originally, mine said 6 and now it says 3.

Click on the number and you can edit and move around the boxes that appear in this location. You can not, however, edit, move or remove the friends and photos boxes.

Hovering over one of the existing boxes, such as Likes, will bring up the pencil icon, and you will then be able to edit the box by removing the item or swapping it’s position with another item. After I activated timeline, one of my boxes was Maps, which I was not thrilled with having there so I deleted it, moved Likes over and brought up Music.

Are you using Timeline yet? Do you like it? I think it looks a lot like a blog. Are you having trouble editing anything? Let me know in the comments.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

How to Edit the Boxes Below the Cover Photo on Facebook’s New Timeline Layout

If there is one thing to say about Facebook it’s that they are not resistant to change.

It feels like every time I turn around, something has changed and I need to do things differently that I’ve been doing them.

And this happened to me earlier this week when I was creating an iframe application for a new Facebook page tab.

In my last and current set of instructions step #16, “On the left side of the page in the Related Links section, click on View App Profile page”, was no longer working. Well, it wasn’t that the step wasn’t working but rather than the link wasn’t there. I was like well, how am I supposed to add this new tab to Facebook page? Is this a bug? Should I try later?

Thanks to the wonderful Tim Ware at Hyperarts I located the solution.

At first I didn’t quite get why the removal of app profile pages in February would take my link away now and maybe Facebook will add a new link that will help with this. Anyway, the part of Tim’s article about making the app private was the solution that I needed. If you read his entire article, you will see that you can also add a link that will allow anyone to add your app to their page. This is great for many apps but for a custom Facebook page it isn’t a solution – why would anyone want to add my custom Welcome tab to their Facebook page?

The Solution

You will need to create a URL for your specific tab, paste into the address bar of your browser and you will then be presented with a dialog box that will allow you to select the page that you want to add the application (page tab) to.

It will look like this.

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=your_app_ID&next=http://the URL to the directory where the page tab is located

The app ID is on the application page when you create the app. And the URL is the same one that you enter in the Canvas URL field when you create the application.

If you formatted the URL correctly, you should see a page like the following in your web browser.

I hope this helps you and keeps you from spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to add the new tab to your page. I was all set to do something super quick and ended up being completely befuddled.

photo credit: xlibber

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How to Add Your Custom Facebook Application to Your Page (now that the view app profile page link is gone)

PagePress is a Facebook application that will import your WordPress blog to your Facebook page. It will create a new tab on your Facebook page called Blog (that can be renamed) and you can set it to also automatically post to your Wall.

The set-up was straightforward and I found it fairly easy to set it up and create a tab for my Facebook page.

The Instructions

1. Go to the PagePress website.
2. Click on the big Get Started button
   
3. Click Allow in the Request for Permission box.
4. You are then taken back to the page for PagePress, which is a little confusing. I clicked on the Get Started button again and was then presented with a list of the pages that I administer. You also getting a confirmation email. I didn’t like that I when I confirmed my sign-up that I was also agreeing to their mailing list. This means I will need to unsubscribe as soon as I receive one as I am currently working on reducing the amount of email I receive.
5. Select the page you want to add the app to, if you are the admin on more than one. Then select the category – I’m never quite sure what to select with these but I decided on Company Services.
6. You will be on your PagePress Dashboard. Click on the red install button to add the app to your page. The category has been selected so are ready for Step 3 – Content Sources.
   
7. Click on Add New Source button.
   

    

   Add the URL to your site, select whether you want to display a thumbnail, set the length of the preview and select how many posts you would like to display on the tab.

8. Under Step 4 – Advance Settings – can set to autopost your blog posts to your page Wall and set up your clickbank username, if you would like to be an affiliate of PagePress.
9. There is also a Stats section where you can view very basic stats on views to your blog tab after the first 24 hours.
10. Go to your Facebook page. In the list of tabs you should see one called called Blog at the bottom. You can edit this section, if you would like to move the tab up.
    
11. The page will look like the following. You can view mine on my Facebook page.

    

As you can see from the above screenshot the blog tab contains ads for PagePress. If you use the paid version the ads are removed.

I thought this was easier to set up then Networked Blogs, which I have been using for quite some time. The PagePress site was a little slow and had a couple of minor issues, such as when I wanted to edit the content source info I got an unavailable message for a couple of minutes but otherwise the process was fairly smooth. I haven’t tested auto-post to wall feature because I still prefer to post things manually in order to keep social media social. If you test the auto-posting, please let me know if it worked for you. (or not).

Do you think you would use this application? It is useful? If you set it up, did you have any issues?

photo credit: 22261474@N08

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Post Your WordPress Blog to Facebook with the PagePress Application

In September my first article for PC World, How to Make a Facebook Page for Your Small Business, was published. My 2nd article, How to Promote and Maintain Your Facebook Business Page, is now available.

This article takes a custom Facebook page to the next level and discusses reveal tabs, e-commerce solutions, ads, and more.

Much like my first article, I found it difficult to sit down, focus and write. I was so much more distracted than when I am writing code or troubleshooting a website problem. My focus was a little better this time and I didn’t feel so much like I was back in grad school – I guess with practice and if I spend more time writing, I will become more focused and write the articles in a more timely manner.

I hope you find the article useful and that it assists in locating resources that you may want to use on your own Facebook page.

photo credit: plant-trees

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How to Promote and Maintain Your Facebook Page – 2nd PC World Article

You can use Facebook’s social plugins on your custom Facebook page to add elements such as the Like Button.

This code can be obtained on the Facebook developer’s page and is basically as easy as copy and paste. Well, and adding it to the correct location on your custom page.

Here are the instructions.

Add the Like Button

1. Go to the Facebook Developers Page.
2. Click on Documentation and then Social Plugins. Documentation is in the top navigation bar and Social Plugins is in the middle of the documentation page under Core Concepts.
3. Click on Like Button, which is the first social plugin listed.
4. In the area to create the code, add the URL to your fan page in the URL to like field. For example, I used the URL to my Facebook page wall – https://www.facebook.com/Anti.Social.Development
5. You can also choose to include the send button and the faces of your fans. I selected faces but deselected send. The rest of the settings can be left on the default.
   
6. Click on the Get Code button
7. I selected the iframes code because it didn’t require as many pieces of code but HTML5 and XFBML will work fine.
8. Add the code to your custom fan page.
9. You can view mine on my custom fan page, (Anti) Social Development.

I found that the faces of those who like the page do not display until you like the page. I have not been able to verify if this is the way it is supposed to work – I though the faces would show either way. If you have any information about this, please let me know.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

How to Add a Facebook Like Button to Your Custom Facebook Page

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Facebook’s new SSL requirement and services that you could use to manage that.

I recently discovered that one of my favorite hosts, Hostgator, offers free SSL certificates, even on shared hosting.

Here’s how you can set this up. Of course, you must be hosting with Hostgator.

Instructions

1. First you need to know what server your site is on. This information is in the welcome email you received when you first signed up with hostgator. It is also available in your cpanel along the left side under Account Information. It should look like have gator and then three numbers – gatorxxx.
2. Replace gator with the word secure so you will have secure+the three numbers – securexxx
3. So, the first part of the SSL address with be https://securexxx.hostgator.com
4. You will then need to add your username in this format – /~username/
5. You will know have the following – https://securexxx.hostgator.com/~username/
6. If you Facebook page or other content that you need to deliver securely is in a subdirectory you will need to add that to the URL – for example, https://securexxx.hostgator.com/~username/facebook/

That’s all there is to it if you are using hostgator’s shared hosting – you don’t need to sign up for anything extra and you can use that same URL format any time you need to use SSL.

As an aside does anyone remember playing on the merry-go-rounds shown in the photo at the top of the article? I do but I haven’t seen one in a long time. I guess they are now considered too dangerous but they sure were fun!

This post contains affiliate links

photo credit: D Sharon Pruitt

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How to Set Up Free Shared SSL with Hostgator

With the advent of iframes for creating custom Facebook pages last Winter, FBML became deprecated, which led us to believe that it would eventually go away. And we were right – the dates have finally been disclosed.

In March of this year it no longer became possible to add the FBML application but pages that were already using it were able to continue using it and their pages created with FBML still worked fine.

FBML will no longer be supported on January 1, 2012. FBML will stop working completely on June 1, 2012.

If you have a custom page built in FBML, you will need to convert it to iframes before next June. Ideally, you will convert it before the end of the year. You can make your own page or use a 3rd party application.

For once Facebook seems to be giving a lot of notice. Although, the only mention I’ve seen so far is a message on the top of the developer’s page for FBML so this isn’t exactly obvious.

If you need assistance converting your FBML pages to iframes, please contact me for an estimate.

photo credit: unfrenziedspace

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Facebook FBML – End of Life Dates