Two imminent changes to Facebook Pages you need to know about

Two imminent changes to Facebook Pages your nonprofit needs to know about

For months now, Facebook has been saying they were going to be removing the boxes tab and setting a limit to the width of custom tabs on Facebook Pages.

On Friday they finally put a date to those changes: During the week of August 23rd (or sooner*).

Deets on the changes to Facebook Pages

So what do these changes mean and how do they impact your org?

No more boxes tab
First, the boxes tab will disappear. This is a welcome change for most Facebook admins because, for the most part, the Boxes tab was nothing more than a place to throw crap that would fit anywhere else. Kinda like the college dorm closet with all the dirty togo sheets.*In terms of their August 23rd drop dead date, I have a note on the Inbound Zombie Page that says August 10th.

Custom tab width limits
This change will have an impact on every single organization who has created a custom tab with a width greater than 520 pixels. Facebook Page admins will have to go into the FBML / HTML code within the Static FBML application and tweak the code for a 520 pixel width limit. In many cases only images will have to be resized to fit the new dimensions. In other cases, more code tweaking will be required.

Facebook will allow you to preview your custom tabs in the new 520 pixel width so you can modify as needed.

Why these changes?

These two changes are meant to simplify the navigation of Pages, make life easier for app developers, and enable Facebook to “build the next generation of tools for growing your business with Facebook”.

Any questions? Please comment below.

Rehydrate your inbox here. Send hate mail here.

Read more articles about Facebook

andystitt829

Thanks for the tips. This means that I will need to adjust the width of the welcome landing page for my organization's FB page. Just need to re-adjust the header, three images, and column-sizes for the text and I'll be set. Photoshop and Dreamweaver, here I come!

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Andy – you could also simply resize the image in the code (width=520).

andystitt829

I could do that, but as a picky web developer, I try to avoid resizing images using the HTML code. It avoids losing image quality, and in this case, since I have to make it smaller, the HTML will only reduce the size of the appearance of the picture but not the actual file size itself. Smaller file size = faster load time, and it only takes less than a minute in Photoshop to do so.

Sorry, overly-picky lecture over, as you were
http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Agreed. I'd resize the images as well.

http://www.facebook-profits.com Jasonsimms09

Actually, to get the boxes tab you have to go to page settings, and click on FBML settings to enable boxes. They haven't done away with them, you just have to activate them is all.

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Good point, but the boxes tab will be going away.

http://www.spiderhousepr.com Carley

Fantastic and very informative post! It has been difficult for us FBML designers to esxplain this to clients when there was no official date.
http://facebook.com/springsbargains Carrie Isaac

I'm confused and can't find a straight answer anywhere. I've used FBML to add several things to my page, like an email list signup and a welcome page for new fans. FBML is really only technically used in boxes, right? So any “boxes” we've created using FBML will be removed. How would I set up a landing page without using FBML?

I just looked at my page and under the Boxes tab are boxes for Events, Favorite Pages, Discussions, etc – all “native” FB applications. So are those technically not Boxes, and will they remain when FB removes boxes?

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

First of all, the Boxes tab is it's own tab all together. That's what's going away.

The best thing to so is go into the app settings for each app and make sure it's added to the tab and not the box.