It’s no secret that Facebook has become a huge player on the social media circuit. In fact, it’s the biggest player out there at the moment, and that, of course, means you need to be there right?

If you have any kind of business or organization you probably have (or are thinking of having I hope) a Facebook fan page. That’s great, but did you know that you can also customize your facebook page to make it more personal? Here’s how:

The first thing you must do is make sure you have a personal account linked to the fan page you wish to customize, and make that personal account an administrator. Once that’s done you will be able to activate applications on your page.

The app that we are interested in is called static FBML – FBML is an acronym for Facebook Markup Language. What exactly is that, I hear you ask. Well, here’s how the developer describes it:
“FBML is an evolved subset of HTML with some elements removed, and others which have been added that are specific to Facebook.”
The important thing about that as far as we are concerned is that we can use HTML to customize our fan pages. FBML is capable of all sorts of other trickery too, but for now let’s just stick to the html aspects of it.

The maximum width you should try and use for your page should be 520px for it to fit properly (500px tends to be just right).

Css rules can also be applied to your pages. It’s important, however, to make sure you call them from an external stylesheet using

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="linktoyourcss.css" >

The use of an external stylesheet ensures compatibility across all browsers

So, here’s the steps needed to get your static fbml tab up and running.

• You edit your FBML tab from the edit page link located underneath your logo on the wall page.
• Scroll down to and click on “edit” on the FBML app.
• Change the box title to something more relevant to your business/organization. Unless of course your business is called fbml, in which case you can leave it the way it is!
• Add your css link, and your html
• click save changes

Pretty simple stuff right.

You should now have an extra tab on your page titled, well, whatever you decided to title it.

If you don’t see your tab go back to edit page, and under fbml click on application settings. Make sure that the option for tab says added, rather than just available. The order of this tab can also be rearranged to some extent on your wall simply by dragging it.

The final thing you need to do is make this tab the default landing page for new visitors to your page. You do this by clicking on “Wall settings”, and under the “default landing tab for everyone else” option change it to your new tab.

It is also possible to make a feature for the sidebar using the same application, except this time you would only want it to be 180px wide.

Need more info? All you have to do is ask…