I am not an expert on Facebook–in fact, I find it to be an exceptionally difficult site to navigate, rife with idiotic processes that are designed to make life more difficult. Not that I feel strongly about the subject or anything.

I was, however, determined to pretty up my Facebook Pages, which had been sitting stagnant and ugly since the recent switch to the Timeline format (and, frankly, weren’t that amazing before that).

The sites still aren’t fabulous, as I’m sure you’ll note if you pop over there yourself to take a peek. But trust me, they’re better. And they now have (or are about to get) the kind of custom content that is the raison d’être of having a Facebook Page in the first place.

For an author, that’s info about our books. That used to be the landing page. Now, it has to be an additional page, added into the site itself.

Maybe I’m just a brain-dead moron, but it took me FOREVER to figure out how to add that content. (And, frankly, I’m not a brain dead moron. So there, Facebook. Phhhlllbbbttt!)

Ahem.

You can visit Julie Kenner Books & More or J.K. Beck Books to see more closely what I’m talking about.

Anyway, since it took me forever to figure this out, I thought I would share what I did, because it is so easy once it’s done. The problem is that Facebook doesn’t give you the tools. You get your Page and you have a place to put your profile picture and your timeline header. You have Notes, you have Likes, you have Events and a few others.

But how were all my friends adding pages with their book information? I asked…no one could tell me. They’d all hired someone else to do it. Being both cheap and determined to figure this out, I set out into the wilds of Facebook.

I Googled.

I got no info.

I bitched and griped and moaned.

It had to be there, I thought. Maybe they were using the “Notes” app that comes with your page. Because why would Facebook create something like a Page for businesses, and then not give them the resources to put out the information about that business?

(That question cannot be answered. We’ll just leave it hanging out there, shall we?)

But no. It’s not Notes. There is, presumably, a use for Notes, but since your visitor has to go into Notes and then click to see various content, it doesn’t make a nice little informative interior page. It just doesn’t.

Turns out, Facebook doesn’t create the means by which you can do what I wanted to do. No, “Developers” do. And what I needed was “an app.” Yes, I figured an app was something like, oh, Farmville. It didn’t occur to me that an “app” was basically an electronic piece of notepaper upon which to dump your html code. Silly me.

Seriously, folks, it took me days to figure this out. I finally Googled the right combination of angry, frustrated words (and remembered that a few years ago, my friend Julia London had said something about iFrames in the context of Facebook. Desperate, I added that into my search).

So here’s what I learned:

You have to go to an app developer’s app page. I tried (and liked) two:

Woobox

and

iFrames

Whichever one you choose, the process is actually pretty easy.

You go to the app’s page (either from the list in WooBox or the “go to app” button on iFrames). Then you follow the instructions. There will be a menu to pick which Page you want it on. (I fiddled with JKBeckBooks first). Then you can add a header image. In both, there is the option to change the tab title and the tab image (it’s their logo first until you change the little box to what you want). Then you have a big box into which you can put your actual html code. It helps if you know html, obviously, but that’s not the point of this blog post, so all I’ll say on that subject is I taught myself basic html coding simply by reading the cheat sheet at webmonkey. Check it out here!

As an aside, Woobox also answered the question I’d posted to the universe about getting my my Pinterest stuff into my Pages. It’s still not ideal, as I was hoping new pins would show up in timeline (through Pinterest, they only go to my Profile page, not my JulieKenner and JKBeck author pages). But I was able to add a custom tab so anyone interested can go see how lame by Pinterest boards are…but hopefully getting better as I’m having fun with that site!

So there you have it. At least one leg of my frustrating Facebook journey is complete (there are sooo many more things that drive me crazy about Facebook, that I have lots of fodder for future “here’s how I did it” posts.

Perhaps you are all shaking your heads going “Man, she is such an idiot. I better go buy her books because that is the only way she’s going to eat–she sure as hell won’t make it in life as a techno-geek.” And perhaps you are right.

But maybe some of you are thinking, “Man, she is so on the money. I must go buy her books as a thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking–that Facebook is a pain in the butt to navigate and far too precious with their information on how to do the simplest things.”

Either way, I hope this post helped. Either by showing you how to add an “app” (that is such a stupid name) for hosting unique content, or by giving you the smug satisfaction of knowing that you’re so much more competent on Facebook than me.

Next Techno Thursday post:How to use Mac’s inexpensive Pixelmator program to create a timeline image or a webpage header.

Any questions about the Facebook content? Was this new to you at all? Helpful? Or did I simply amuse you with my ignorance? Happy to oblige on either count!

Oh, and don’t forget, I’m running a Super Fantabulous Contest over on Facebook at both my JulieKenner Facebook page and my JK Beck Facebook page. The contest is set up on the unique html apps that I added. Follow the hyperlinks to go directly there. And spread the word! As you can see from the contest description, the more people who enter, the better the prizes!