Big Changes coming… Fix your FanpageBoxes right now!
Okay… so tonight I got an odd message on Facebook when visiting someone’s fanpage. The error message that came up said:
IMPORTANT: Facebook have announced that all links, boxes and ‘info sections’ for applications will be REMOVED from your profile in the next few weeks. To continue using this application you must add a bookmark for it now so that you can return to it after the links have been removed from your profile. To add a bookmark now, simply click this button and confirm…
Well… this got me a little panicked and for good reason. Most, if not all, of the fanpages I have created for clients involves boxes. Yikes! At first I couldn’t find anything on my major research areas. So I posted a couple questions online and in some communities I belong to. Then I did some more research and found the answer thanks to Allison Gianotti at Snipe.Net
Her article led me to the Developers Page on Facebook – which didn’t seem to come up in my initial searching.
And now after reading this, I am definitely SCARED, and apparently will be very busy in the next week. I need to do more research as to whether this will affect Boxes tabs on Fanpages as well. Profiles tend to refer to personal facebook profiles, so I am hoping, but it does not look good as they also make note of the fact that:
Application tabs will be the only way to integrate applications into profiles and Pages. Application tabs will shrink from 760 pixels wide (today) to 520* pixels wide to accommodate a slightly revised design. Boxes, info sections, and the Boxes tab will be removed in the near future.
When will this happen? Well apparently in “Late 2009 or Early 2010″ – not the best description, and the error message I got above, makes it seem like it will be sooner rather than later.
I will be looking into more detail and keep you updated. But it may be best to backup your fanpage info if you have not done so already.
Tags: Facebook, Social Media
Yes, this is concerning!
Do you just copy and paste your fanpage content to a Word document, or is there a way to actually do a backup?
Janet,
From what I have read the Boxes tab will be gone. The backup I have is a word doc with all info I have placed on a fanpage. It may be the app will be there as a tab. There does not appear to be a specific date. So get your backup in place as soon as possible.
Kathy
I don’t use the boxes tab on my profile, so the applications will all still work, right? Just the tab will be gone.
I do use it on my fan pages though. I hate that they keep changing the rules. It makes it hard to comply when you don’t know if what you’re doing right today will be wrong tomorrow.
Yes, it will be boxes that they are doing away with. What you need to do is convert your boxes to tabs. Go in to your Application Settings and remove your boxes and add the tabs. You really should not put your html coding in a word doc, they are better saved in something like Notepad. Word is too “advanced” and adds some things that can cause your html to be thrown off. Anything you have in the Boxes tab will be gone but the actual tabs will be save (from what I have read).
I’ve gotten some more info and there is a how-to post on changing your FBML boxes to tabs in the Nov 16th blog post here http://mytwitterva.com/facebook/update-facebook-boxes/
Crystal, you should prepare them and Rebbecca is correct in how to do the fixing – as well as keeping your html backup copy in Notepad.
Changes always happen, it’s just hard when you have no time to prepare for them!
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