In the previous video, I showed you how to create a Facebook application and how to connect that new application to your WordPress blog. Now in this video, I’m going to show you how to customize your new application to make it more appealing and also to make it more useful. Now, the first thing that you’d want to do is give your application a description. So if this application is solely for your WordPress blog, then you may as well, in the Description field here, so, some interesting information about why someone should read your blog or subscribe to your blog.
[evp width=”640″ height=”480″]tutorials/wpvideos/fb-customize-app.swf[/evp]
Okay, so this is a small blurb here that you can customize to whatever you want. Now, an important thing to remember when editing your Facebook application page is to save regularly, because when I click on the other links here, unfortunately, I’m going to a new page and whatever I haven’t saved is just lost. So, I’m going to scroll to the bottom and click on Save Changes.
Okay, so changes have been saved, and I’m going to click on Edit Settings again, and back to the page I was before, and now I’m going to put in an icon and a logo for my application. Now of course, this is not a Photoshop tutorial, so I can’t teach you how to create your own icon or to create your own logo, but assuming that you already have your icon and your logo, so I’m just going to click on ‘Change your icon’, okay, and it says ‘You can upload a JPEG, GIF, or a PNG file’. And the image, the optimal size of the icon image should be 16 by 16 pixels, so I’m going to look for one.
And in this case, I’m just going to use some social media icon, in this example, a Google buzz icon, because I don’t really have an icon for this. Okay, and click on “…certify that I have the right to distribute this photo and that it is not pornography.†And upload a new icon.
Alright, so you can see my icon here, okay, now remember to save the changes regularly, and go to the Edit Settings page again, and now we can upload a logo, alright, so this logo is actually more prominent, it appears on your Fan Box, it appears on your main application page, etc., so I’m going to click on Change Logo, and the same as before, the file types are the same, but now your image should be about 75 x 75 pixels.
Okay, so I don’t have one that fits the exact size; I’m just going to select one of the Google buzz icons I have in my computer, and click on Upload. And okay, so now you can see my logo over here and my icon. I’m going to click on Save Changes, alright, and I now…my logo looks terrible because it is not 75 x 75 pixels, so make sure if you don’t want your images to look stretched out of this that you comply to the height and recommended width for your applications. Go to Edit Settings again, and now some of the more important settings, of course, you are the main developer of this application but for safety purposes, I always recommend that you add some of your other friends as your co-developers as well. Okay? Just in case you accidentally remove yourself from this application, or if Facebook removes you from this application, then you can still have some level of control if you have added other developers. Okay, so, this is a test profile, I don’t really have much friends here, so I’m gonna skip this step…and the main developer contact email, make sure that this is a valid email, and the User Support Address. Now, this is what Facebook gives your application users if they have some kind of issue or if their application is not working, okay? So if you have a support desk URL, you can put in that URL here. I’m going to just leave this as email, and the bookmark URL. This can be anything you want, actually, but since you want this application to work in your WordPress blog, I am going to put in my WordPress blog URL.
And similarly, you can fill up the next three fields as well, with the Help URL for any other websites that you want the user to go to, the Privacy URL, and also your Terms of Service URL. Okay, so, I’m going to click on Save Changes…and, okay, it says, “Validation failed. Bookmark URL must be relative to your Canvas URL, Connect URL, or Base Domain.’ Alright, so this is geek talk over here; I have no idea what it means, but I do understand base domain, and if you have not specified your base domain, you can just go to Connect, okay, and Facebook Connect Settings, alright. So you can put in a Connect URL and an Account Preview URL, but most importantly, the base domain over here, and click on Save Changes.
Okay, so that’s basically how you customize your Facebook application, and you can see now I have a logo, I also have an icon, and all the stats say zero at the moment, but in the next video, I will teach you how to actually add some of the Facebook widgets to your WordPress blog to get more fans and also more users to your Facebook application.