Facebook Change to Timeline View

Facebook is changing the way it looks for both personal accounts and pages.

I’ve been reading about the changes for the last little bit and honestly thought I would be one of the accounts that just flipped to a default timeline view on March 30th when Facebook automatically switches pages over.

However, I decided to be a bit adventurous yesterday and get the Add a Pinch community page on Facebook all ready for the big switchover. While it is still not perfect, I feel like it was a pretty good start. I’ll continue to update it to make sure I get it as user-friendly as I possibly can for you. Hang in there with me!

I thought I would also share with you a few things that I learned while I was switching over the Add a Pinch community page. You can apply the information on the cover photo customizations to your personal account as well.

 

How to Customize Facebook for the Timeline View

 

1. Cover photo

The dimensions for your cover photo are 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high.

I created my cover photo in Photoshop, but you can also simply upload a design or photograph and allow Facebook to resize it to the dimensions needed. The quality may not be as high as a custom designed cover photo, but it works.

You can also reposition a photo to place it exactly where you would like for it to be.

 

 

2. Tab Badges

Where the previous Facebook pages had links to tabs on the left sidebar of the page, the new timeline view displays image badges for tabs. The first tab badge from the left is defaulted to photos, but the remaining badges can be customized to your preference.

I decided to include a link to my Pinterest boards and to subscribe to receive updates from my website for ease of use for Add a Pinch community members. You can determine the tab badges you would like to include and in the order you would like to include them.

To create custom badge icons, I used Photoshop again and saved my designs for 111 pixels by 74 pixels.

 

*Please note that as of today, there is a known bug with uploading custom badges. It took multiple tries for my subscribe badge to upload correctly.

3. Pinterest Tab

As I said earlier, I wanted to include a tab for my Pinterest account. I tried various methods, but was unsuccessful with making them work the way that I wanted them to work. Finally, I discovered Woobox and utilized it for creating my tabs.

 

I enabled the 810 pixels wide for my page tab badges.

Then, select URL and enter your Pinterest URL. I prefer the look of using the mobile address for Pinterest (http://m.pinterest.com/addapinch) instead of the regular URL. This prevents users from having to scroll left and right to be able to see all of the content on your Pinterest site.

Next, increase the height of your page. I used 1500 pixels.

After that, you’ll see a place to enter the name you’d like to assign to this tab. Enter something that makes sense to your community. I simply used Pinterest because I’m simple like that! Ha!

 

So, I hope this was a little bit helpful for you. I wanted to be able to share what I learned in the process and I hope it shaves a little time off of your switchover.

If you have any questions, just leave them below in the comments. If I don’t know the answer, I’m sure another member of the Add a Pinch community will and will join in to answer it for us both!

Happy Thursday!

Love ya,
Robyn xoxo

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