Custom Facebook Pages with Easy FanPage Engine WordPress Plugin
Since Facebook took away FBML for static custom Facebook pages, we’ve all been looking for the fastest, best method for creating fanpages. One that wouldn’t cost hundreds every month, be branded by someone else’s name and wouldn’t be hard to implement.
Far and away the slickest tool I’ve seen for the money is the Easy FanPage Engine WordPress Plugin which you can install on any wordpress site. It adds a section called FanPage to Posts and Pages. It includes a template that allows all the tabs you want, and has reveal code and comments built in.
There is plenty of training – lots of graphics – Easy Fanpage Engine makes sophisticated usable Facebook pages a snap. Give it a try! Click Here!
If you’re on a mobile device, use this to go to Easy FanPage Design and start making custom facebook pages today:
If you are in any way connected to the internet, involved in social media and doing Facebook pages, you’re aware of the frenzy surrounding Zuck’s annuncement that the static FBML pages are gone …
Gone like a freight-train, gone like yesterday Gone like a soldier in the civil war, bang bang Gone like a ’59 Cadillac Like all the good things that ain’t never coming back
Gone, circa 2004, Montgomery Gentry
People are scrambling all over the world to find a decent replacement to the ease of putting together a good FBML page in the iframe world, and there just isn’t one. Advice abounds from all directions, including the developers data at Facebook. Getting it out of FB, though, is a strenuous job, and everyone doesn’t want to do it, or goes brain dead trying to read how to string the stuff together so that it works like you want it to.
Fixes, Cures, Templates
Even I wrote a tutorial for a private audience that was a pretty big hit. Sold about 1,000 copies in under 12 days. I guess that’s a hit. And, the only complaint I got was that it was too hard. People couldn’t follow the screenshots, and work through the maze the fb gods have given us with iframes.
Add to that the constant changes going on at fb, and pages are currently a real headache.
Don’t think I’m complaining about the service level from fb. I’m not. I’m sure there are a lot of people over there who wish the static FBML still worked because this iframes thing has created problems NO ONE thought of.
In addition to writing my own tutorial, I’ve bought most of the ‘templates’ packages and promotions that other people began selling after mine hit the racks. I’ll be reviewing them over the next week or so, and posting pages I’ve made with their products so you can see for yourself how they work out.
Facebook made a major redesign of Pages for businesses, etc. The Page layout mirrors the new user profile, including the left side nav menu and doing away with tabs above the wall.
Profile Layout for Pages
Like the Profile for people, the Page has a photostrip top and center. Downside is they rearrange every time the page is loaded, so nothing you can do will secure the photos like a banner. (There was some Facebook thought behind this, I’m sure.) The profile picture that I wrote about in How to Facebook: Profile Photo is now 180 x 540, reduced from the 200 x 600 it was previously.
Tabs have disappeared, and are now in the left hand nav list.
You can use longer names, and you’ll probably need them because the left nav bar is nowhere near as obvious as the tabs were.
Wall Filter
There is an option for ‘everyone’ or page-only posts to be shown on the wall. And once again, we’re being given that which the Facebook gods deem relevant to our readers . . . I understand they will stream recent posts by friends and other users as long as the language and country are the same, and of course, posts that have received likes and comments will find their way to the top.
There is no option for Pages to publicly display the stream as we are used to seeing it. Admins can look at it via the ‘admin view’, and they can see posts hidden by themselves or the perpetual FB spam filters that remove things from normal view. There is the ability to reveal posts from this feed, but I’d rather be taking off posts than putting them back up.
Landing Tab
When Pages change permanently, through your choice or the big switch coming in March, the landing tab will be reset. Make sure you fix it where you want it!
Admins Can “Use Facebook as Page”
This isn’t as good as it sounds . . . You can’t post on people’s profiles, because as a Page, you can’t have friends . . . You can ‘like’ other pages, but you can’t pop around facebook as if your Page suddenly got a personality! You will see a feed of updates from the pages you like, so when your page is liked, those admins will be re-exposed to you.
And, they say in response to repeated requests, Facebook now allows admins to receive email alerting them of activity on their Page. (Get to this thru “Your Settings” tab on the Edit Page of the admin interface).
The Facebook gods got involved again, smaller pages with less friends have the default set to on; large pages with Large numbers of fans have a default of OFF. Decisions, decisions . . . we just can’t make them fast enough, can we? Oh, yeah, we don’t get to make them.
No API Changes
These changes don’t interfere with the Page APIs, so applications shouldn’t break. While applications shouldn’t break, the FBML code is being deprecated, so there are things that aren’t working and things will continue to go away as Facebook moves to I-frames that were due in 2010, but them moved to March 2011. The FBML application will not be available after March 2011. Get them while you can. Facebook tells us they will continue to work, but we won’t get any new ones after that date. The I-frame is a more powerful method of getting a unique page up, but much more difficult for the normal small business user to figure out. (More on that in a later post.)
The thoughts behind the changes are that
people are by now used to the look of the profile and will adjust to it more easily
the wall filter is meant to ensure that readers see ‘high quality’ fresh content every time they look at a page.
Page people will want to spend more on advertising (surprise!!) because the page experience is so much richer. (I’m not sure I follow that logic in a straight and logical fashion, but that is what we’ve been told.)
If you have a Facebook Page for yourself, your brand, or your company, and you are still using a standard sized photograph for your profile picture, you’re losing a lot of advertising space that you can claim as your own.
The maximum profile image for Pages is 200px x 600px.
Think about what you can do in that space!
Here are some of the profile pictures I’ve done for clients so you can see the possibilities:
You can add your twitter feed, website, phone number, address . . . your slogan, your photograh. Anything you can imagine. You can put here. I’ve seen profile photos that included a hand-drawn arrow toward the like button and an admonition to LIKE! this page.
Have fun with it, and reclaim your real estate for yourself!!
If you don’t have the time to be your own Social Media PR Machine, or just want direction in where, how, when, and how much, you’re in the right place.
We build custom brands for individuals and companies, and design publicity and promotions to build targeted audiences and keep them informed, amused, entertained. Engaged.
Facebook (Fan) Pages
One of my favorite projects is the Facebook Page – And the ones we’ve done are slick, sexy, and very useful Facebook pages. AND, we work to meld your media around the web: YouTube Channels, Tumblr and Flickr accounts, WordPress Blogs, Newsletters, and email marketing campaigns all joined together in a workable fashion, each one feeding to the other.
Client Spotlight: PeachtreeSEO
Calling this a client spotlight is probably not quite accurate – I work with Peachtree SEO on a lot of projects, but they wanted a facebook page that rocked, and they asked me to do it (I know, sounds smug, doesn’t it? Sorry, I really like what I did for them!)
For anyone who hasn’t already “liked” Peachtree SEO, the landing page is a “Like” request with an arrow pointing upwards to the Facebook “like” button:
After the page is “liked” a mini-biography of the work Peachtree SEO does appears:
They offer a free SEO evaluation at the very onset of their relationship with a new contact, which is a great way to begin, I think.
Endless possibilities with iframes
Sign-up forms for newsletters, pulling your blog feed into facebook, having a sales shopping cart are all things you can do with Facebook. There are space limitations, but everyone works with them.
Search Engine Indexing
Facebook Pages are indexed immediately – I’ve seen new pages get listed in Google in under five minutes, so they are a huge boon to your online presence, and one more addition to the Google Juice we all want for websites!
Do it Yourself Plans
If you have a wordpress site now, you can use the Easy FanPage WordPress PlugIn to design your page and implement it.
Far and away the slickest tool I’ve seen for the money is the Easy FanPage Engine WordPress Plugin which you can install on any wordpress site. It adds a section called FanPage to Posts and Pages. It includes a template that allows all the tabs you want, and has reveal code and comments built in.
You can also buy it from my Easy Fan Page Design WordPress Plugin Facebook page if you look it over and decide you do want it. The developer’s license allows you to make as many Custom Facebook Pages as you can manage.
Get Your Facebook Page Customized
Prices vary according to what you want – send an email through the form below, and we’ll talk about what you want, what it will cost you and what you can expect to get out of your investment.
Custom Facebook Pages with Easy FanPage Engine WordPress Plugin
Fixes, Cures, Templates
Social Media PR Machine
