Yesterday, Facebook announced a new initiative for users of Fan Pages.
The social networking beheemoth now offers Fan Boxes you can add to your Web site. These boxes show your live Facebook stream, as well as fans of your page. It also has a button folks can hit and instantly become fans on Facebook.
Newsweek integrated a Fan Box on it's homepage:
There are a few size restrictions, as highlighted by Ray C. He on Facebook's developer blog:
The Fan Box can integrate tightly into your website – it takes a
minimum of 200px width and 64px height for the button, and 554px height
with all features included. You can read more detailed instructions on our Developer Wiki.
I decided to try out this newbie and see how it would fit with Market My Novel.
The original Fan Box has a width of 300 pixels. No way would that work with the column width's on this blog. I could change the sidebar column widths, but then I'd have to change the masthead – something I ran into before and knew I did NOT want that headache again.
I put the box at 200 pixels – the minimum – and chose to offer the feed, but not show fans. Here was the unsurprising result:
The text is cut off and you cannot access the scroll bar.
I went back to the drawing board and tried to do just a Fan Box with a Fan button only. Again, the width was a problem:
I love the idea of this Fan Box, but it won't work with my blog, unless I want to overhaul some things – which takes time and a ton of headaches. Is it worth it for this one little button – especially since I no longer input the Market My Novel RSS feed into the Facebook Fan Page (a direct result of the TOS idiocy a few months ago)?
Why Facebook doesn't have a small button to offer for this, I have no clue. It makes sense to have something smaller for smaller spaces. Not everyone with a blog or Web site wants something so big taking up valuable space. Plus, the bigger it is, the cheesier it could make your site look. The Fan Box, as is, also won't flow well with some Web designs.
Despite the flaws I see in it, this is definitely a terrific add on for author Web sites – if they can be customized enough to fit your template. Be sure to ask your Web designer if it is possible – especially if you don't want the headache of coding.
Here are a few good links to get you started:
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I did think about doing a separate page for all social networks, since I need to do one for my resume blog.
However, I don't have as much luck driving traffic to those pages. The icon visuals seem to work the best for me.
Still, I think I will try this, just to get the information out there.
Thanks for commenting!
Yes it's burdensome to place on some sidebars; like yours and mine. Nevertheless I think it's a great development and Facebook has done a fine job allowing for some good Page promotion off-site.
My solution to the sidebar issue was to create a page within the blog, placed in the navigation bar, titled: "Connect with Me Elsewhere". It includes the full scroll bar.
Maybe that'll work for you here as well?