Easy Facebook IFrame Apps - Video

Many B&B’s, small lodging properties, and other small businesses have taken advantage of Facebook to reach their clientele, and have made themselves look very professional doing so, with custom pages on their Facebook page. Most of these custom pages were built using Facebook’s FBML app, which was quite feasible for developers, but somewhat intimidating for the non-technical person.

In early February Facebook announced that they would be eliminating the FBML apps on March 11, 2011 (though existing apps will not be removed, thank goodness!), and future apps would have to be IFrame apps (which Facebook had previously not permitted — the more things change…).

While creating an IFrame app sounds very technical, and could easily intimidate, if you can build a simple web page, you can build a Facebook IFrame app.

An IFrame is simply a window inside a web page, and another web page is displayed in that window. In the case of a Facebook IFrame, your web page, on the same server as your website, is displayed inside the window on your Facebook page. One thing to remember, however, is that Facebook will limit the width of your IFrame, so keep it to 520 pixels in width (and keep an eye on things, as you may need to make it a little smaller to avoid the right edge being clipped off).

If you prefer a step-by-step written tutorial, there is an excellent one from HyperArts. They also provide a skeleton web page you can cut-and-paste to begin creating the page you will use for your IFrame app on your Facebook page.

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