Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Somedays WordPress Can Make You Want To Pull Your Hair Out!

That’s why we’ve added a new weekly event for you to Kimberly Castleberry’s Facebook Fan page!

Hey everyone, I’m Kimberly Castleberry and for those that don’t know me I’m a WordPress tech that specializes in supporting small and home business owners in getting the most from their WordPress sites without having to become geeks themselves!

I run a number of events including #TribeTuesday and #FanPageFriday on my page throughout the week that provide you with opportunities to promote others as well as yourself. Check them out for more details.

I put #WordPressWednesday together to give anyone that is feeling stuck, confused, baffled, or generally curious about something related to WordPress or use of WordPress in marketing an opportunity to come out and ask questions and get them answered! Even better… its FREE!

Several generous individuals, including Nile here at WP Addict and others graciously join me in the fun and help answer a wide range of topics.

While there are some questions that are not possible to answer in a Q&A format, you’d be surprised what we can find a way to answer!

Whether its a plugin setting, questions about what plugin to use, difficulty with a configuration, puzzled over the difference between contact forms and optin forms, or wondering what the pros and cons of wordpress.com and wordpress.org are – we got you covered!

How does it work? Just come over to my page – ( Kimberly Castleberry Facebook fan page )], hit the “like” button if you haven’t already, and then go to the Wall tab and start a new message/conversation! As soon as I can I will answer you back to the best of my ability!

Now, of course actual support work is going to be required in some cases but generally with a little discussion most things can be answered right there on the page!

Even if you don’t have any questions, watching the questions that come in can be a great way to pick up pointers and ideas.

Skilled in WordPress? Come join us and flaunt your WP muscles! It’s a great opportunity to help answer questions, build your reputation and foster the love of our beloved WordPress in new users!

I look forward to seeing you on Facebook each week!

Kimberly

PS: Also be sure to check out #WordPressWednesday, #FanPageFriday, and #SharingSundays on Nile Flores’ fan page for another great place to promote your most recent blog post AND ask those WordPress questions!

I like Facebook. I really do, but some of these changes they have made, suck. I actually feel kind of squeezed in Facebook with the chat and the constanting updating stream.

No offense, but I do not want to know everyone’s ongoings, especially where it is distracting to the eye while I am trying to use Facebook. Not only does the livestream keep rolling on, but that little blue popup note on the bottom right hand corner of Facebook also functions. WHY!?!? This is redundant and for anyone on a poor Internet Service Provider, it makes for a longer load.

The great thing about Facebook before this change was how simple and uncluttered the site was. This addition is making for one busy page and frankly, I’d hate to see Facebook put more on the page. It is literally a design disaster!

Will I stop using Facebook? No. Will I complain to Facebook? Yes. Will Facebook listen to my complaint along with the thousands of others who have complained about this change? Probably not. Kimberly Castleberry put a great collection of comics in a post about the reactions to Facebook and their changes.

Where is the big dislike button for this?

What are your thoughts?

I thought I would put together a short video tutorial on creating a username for your Facebook profile or Facebook fan page. Normally, for both, when you first sign up for either a profile or fan page, the URL structure is very generic and often has a long number.

For those who brand their user profiles online, the number can be a bit of a pain. However, it is only temporary. For profiles you may have to authenticate your account by cell phone to have use of this feature. For fan pages, you have to at least have 25 fans.

As a quick reference from the video. The link to the page to change your Facebook username or Facebook fan page is http://www.facebook.com/username/.

In the case you are having troubles with gaining fans, I might suggest participating in #FanPageFriday at both the Facebook fan pages of Nile Flores and Kim Castleberry. Just remember to also share the link to your favorite fan pages and then another wall post to your own fan page.

I am lucky to have a great friend like Kimberly Castleberry that also loves to help people. She has been working hard on a comprehensive Facebook series to help those needing a leg up in using Facebook, especially fan pages.

With some of the changes that Facebook came up with, especially with the Facebook iFrames, this has either confused some, allowed others to be bamboozled by people taking advantage of the confusion by selling ridiculous products, or even alienated some.

Kim put together a 90 minute webinar video just on Facebook iFrames 101. I think it is a great tool, and costs only $17. I normally do not do much promotion on products and from those who are regular readers know this. However, I know Kim personally, and I have seen this webinar, and it really is an informative tool to learn from and use.

It is more than worth the investment. Even if you are not much on learning about how to handle Facebook iFrames for your fan page, you can certain learn a lot, plus whomever does your designing, can learn from the tutorial side for the intermediate and advanced users who are familiar with developing on Facebook. It was enough for me to throw in designing the header graphic for her landing page for this video.

If you have already had the privilege of watching her Facebook iFrames 101 video, let me know your thoughts on it.

Facebook has yet another update for Facebook fanpages. Not sure if this is a flop as I have not seen much on bad things with the update, but that is because I am still playing around with the the new features.

I am glad that with this update Facebook was courteous enough to put together a tour. They have added the same feature of pictures at the top like profiles. However, only you can update your own page’s photos so you will not get those annoying “tagged” photos from some of the Facebook apps.

Your edit page feature is in the top right of the page.

Instead of tabs, your former tabs are underneath your fan page image. Also, for those who use leaderboard 200×600 pixel images for their fan page image, it will be scaled down to 180×540 pixels with the upgrade.

The edit page has the sections to the right and the different sections like editing your fan page info/ description, adding applications, and more. It is less squished together than the older version to edit your page. I do not like that the insights page does not have a back link to the edit section. It only has a link to go back to the page itself.

You still cannot suggest to friends unless you are an admin or have a special fbml installed in your welcome tab, at least for those who have one. You also cannot see the members on a fan page you are not an admin of. You can only see your own members. You can however see how many of your mutual friends are fans of the same page.

You can view my fan page, the facebook fan page of Nile Flores to view the changes from the user perspective. (You can also right click on the image to the right to view it larger in a new window.)

Some people have complained that their update took a long time, but if you are having troubles (like you could not update your page, or something turns up strange and glitchy), then give Facebook a holler by reporting these issues. As a note, you will only be able to keep the old version of your fan page until March 1st. After that, fan pages that have not upgraded, will be automatically upgraded at that time.

Have you tried the upgrade or at least previewed your fan page in the upgraded format? What do you think? What could be improved upon?

Well, Facebook has gone and done it again. I will not paste the Britney Spears “Oops! I did it again” because well, Facebook apparently never has those oopsies, even though this one is one of the bad decisions.

So, you can suggest your own fan page to others so far (that is not exactly sure if it will remain), but you cannot suggest other fan pages to friends.

Kimberly Castleberry brought it up in her fan page stream and after already having realized this, I felt like having a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor. I replied:

Thanks Facebook for not allowing me to suggest to my friends how they can really get great help w/ their sites… by “liking” and becoming a fan of my friend Kim Castleberry. She is obviously not a spammer. Also I cannot suggest to my close friends to like Johna Cena or perhaps even AC/DC on Facebook, because a lot of my close friends like a lot of things I like too. Perhaps after myself and I know, many other bloggers who talk about this… perhaps you might grow a brain.

Thank you! Your friend- Nile.

This is not something that was used mostly by administrators. I am pretty sure the real reason was all those spammers from places like Fiverr getting $5 to invite a couple thousand of your Facebook friends to different fan pages.

However, who knows… maybe Facebook has plans for the feature. No one knows what two marbles happen to be rolling around in that brain child.

I like Twitter and have found some great uses for it, but let us face it, 140 characters can be limiting. Some of the trends I have been seeing, as well as participating in at Facebook has allowed me to connect with others, even people not originally in my social networking circle.

So, I have kind of split this into two sections: groups and fan pages.

Facebook Groups

This is a newer feature that I see Facebook putting aside from applications and even fan pages. These are not necessarily forums, but they seem to be. Some of the groups I see taking off are for bloggers, social gamers, and social networkers.

While I know there are a lot of groups out there, some great ideas is to harness this like LinkedIn Groups and Yahoo! Groups. Starting conversation

The great thing is that you can connect with others.

The bad things are that the format is a bit messy and needs more of a forum type of look. I do want to note as a word of caution is to edit your settings or you will be emailed everything that goes on in the group rather than just the messages you have replied to.

Fan Pages

This is something both Kim Castleberry (Kim Castleberry on Facebook) does, and I have too (Nile Flores on Facebook.) We use our fan pages and allow people to share their work. This allows me to be able to actively engage with my Facebook fan page followers. Some events Kim holds are #TribesTuesday (sharing a post link from a friend), #WordPressWednesday (ask a WordPress question) and #FanPageFriday (share yours AND a friend’s fan page.) I hold #SharingSundays (share your most recent blog post) and #DiggingThursdays (share your most recent digg submission link and get dugg.)

Now as I listed those events, they are merely things you can play with for your fan page, whether you want to do a retweet day, which is good for your Klout score, or maybe a StumbleUpon day or something else that is fun and engaging.

Now, I am sure if your fan page following counts are not that high, that you might worry that having an event is not even possible, but you know – even if you tried a once a month event, you are making that extra effort to engage your followers and get to know them better.

What ways do you creatively network on Facebook?

So Facebook and MySpace have decided to get buddy buddy and MySpace is going to allow Facebook updates and even login with the social network titan. This comes after a long standoff that perhaps the fact that MySpace finally realizes how significant it is to integrate some type of Facebook connect, considering how many more people are using the service.

That, and those still lingering professionally have probably jumped to Facebook due to urges from bloggers, news, and perhaps consultants. MySpace does have some uses, like making a cutsy page for Musicians. I know there are abilities to do that with Facebook, but only if you download a special toolbar and application.

I rarely use my MySpace account, so this was not terribly huge news to me. Most of the social networks that I have seen or use, are integrating some type of Facebook Connect or Twitter Authorization, meaning to me that Facebook has been the titan. Why has it taken so long for MySpace to jump on board?

I admit I was a MySpace user before I was a Facebook user, but the logic, especially professionally, was a no-brainer when using Facebook. I left my MySpace account like it was a rotten banana.

My take on MySpace admitting they cannot beat Facebook (Wayne and Garth saying to Alice Cooper – “We’re not Worthy!”).

Will I be regularly using MySpace? Probably not – I check it once a month… if I have time. What can MySpace offer?

Do you use MySpace? Was this news something to shrug at or do you really see it as a way for MySpace to try to play nice with Facebook and try to get some more users? If you do use MySpace, what do you use it for?