Good news, everyone! My compulsive need to make websites and write content has struck again, this time resulting in my new site, FBMHell.Com, which I hope will evolve into a great resource for Facebook developers, whether you’re an app developer or fan page designer.

It’s literally just been launched, so I’m looking for your help. I’ll be going through some older posts and rounding up the questions that seem to come up often and writing up answers for the new site, but if there’s a burning question you’ve had for a while and haven’t been able to find an answer for, let me know in the comments.

One that comes up often is whether or not you can include an IFRAME in a tab, so don’t ask that one It’s already on deck.

I’m looking for all kinds of questions, ranging from the complicated to the more basic, so don’t be afraid to ask. More complicated tutorials (similar to what I’ve posted in the past regarding app development and complex mini-sites on tabs) will take a little longer, so be patient, and remember to subscribe to the RSS feed so you’ll get all the latest posts.

Categories will be added as content demands, of course.

I really want this site to be a great resource for everyone (including myself, as a repository of stuff I know works), so I’m looking forward to your feedback!

Also keep your eyes peeled for the launch of FBMLWizard, a drag+drop Facebook fan page tab builder.  I’ll update you here when it’s ready.

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Sad you don’t have an iPhone4 yet? Don’t feel bad – write an NES-themed haiku, and you might win a super-cool NES iPhone 3G/3GS skin.

UPDATE: The winner is Kyle Mitchell for his haiku:
Callouses on thumbs
triangles pressed into palms
8 bits of heaven

I’m a big fan of Infectious, a company that produces custom and artist-contributed skins for all manner of devices such as the iPad, iPhone, laptops, iPods, car decals and more. A little while ago, I stumbeld across two iPhone designs that were too cool to pass up.

The skins I picked were the NES controller and the Supertape old-school mixed tape.

These skins are even cooler in person than they appear in the pictures. While out at Nerdapalooza last weekend, I had the mixed tape skin on my iPhone, and got plenty of comments about it. These are real conversation-starters, especially for geeks.

So here’s the deal. I ordered these skins prior to U-boating my iPhone 3G (dropped in the toilet – don’t ask). The phone that died was buried in the mixtape skin, but after the U-Boating event, I was left with an unopened NES skin that I couldn’t use, since I upgraded to the iPhone 4 and the skin wouldn’t fit.

Rather than just holding a raffle-style contest on Twitter (which would be fun but really hard to keep track of entries with and not as much fun as haikus), I decided to post it here. I’m not in cahoots with Infectious in any way on this – I just love their stuff, and wanted to have some fun getting rid of a great skin I can’t use.

How to Enter

Just reply in the comments withyour NES-themed haiku and your email address, so I can get in touch with you if you win. (Of course, you’re welcome to share your comments and not enter, but any comments in 5-7-5 format will be considered an entry, unless you tell me otherwise.) You’re welcome to obfuscate your email address (as in “snipe [at] snipe [dot] net”) to avoid it being crawled by spambots.

Please have your submissions in before Tuesday, July 27 at midnight. I leave for Defcon this week, so I’d like to get the winner’s skin mailed out before I go. I will announce the winner in the comments by midnight Wednesday, July 28 in the comments.

The winner will receive one unopened, brand new NES skin, compatible with the iPhone 3G/3Gs. This skin is NOT compatible with the iPhone 4. If it was, I wouldn’t be giving it away, I’d have used it, instead of buying the iPhone 4 version.

Once a winner has been decided, I will contact them by email to get the mailing address and details.

You may enter as many times as you want, but remember that quality beats quantity any day.

Entries I deem worthy may be posted on GeekHaiku.Com and/or posted to Twitter, with attribuition but no compensation. Deal, or don’t enter. There is no cash equivalent for winning. It’s a fucking $15 iPhone skin. Don’t bust bust my balls over legal bullshit when I’m trying to do something nice.)

Comments on this blog are held for moderation to prevent spamming my legitimate users, but don’t worry – all entries will nget reviewed and approved.

I won’t do anything nefarious with your email. You won’t be added to any lists or other nonsense. I’m not a dick. I just want to find this skin a new home with someone I know will really appreciate it. Now show me that person is you.

If you don’t have a 3G /3GS, stop by Infectious and check out some of their cool skins for other gadgets. The skins look fantastic on the iPhone 4 with a bumper

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There are about 900 different options available to automatically back up your Mac, none of which I have been in love with until now.

If you’ve been reading my blog for more than three minutes, you’ve probably come across a post where I strongly recommend (okay, balls-out lecture, harp, nag and preach) that you should back your shit up. For web developers or site owners, that means your web servers, for “normal” people that means, at the very least, your computer.

Apple gives you a reasonably good way of automating your backups, by way of Time Machine. This is made even more effortless if you use Time Capsule, a dedicated network drive that integrates with Time Machine. Thing is, I have never wanted to pony up the cash for a Time Capsule, which starts at $299. Add to that the fact that I spend half my time working from home, half my time at the office, half my time commuting. (I’m very busy, you know.) So a networked drive is a nice enough solution, but backing things up in multiple locations can be a pain in the ass, especially when I’m not always near either of my primary locations. Relying on just one hard drive is scary, since eventually, all hard drives fail, and with my luck, mine will fail at the exact same moment that my Macbook Pro catches on fire, falls out a window into the ocean and is eaten by giant space pandas that can breathe underwater. (What? It happens!)

I had been using Jungledisk, but it’s slow as hell and they charge you a monthly fee for the privilege of using it (plus the AS3 charges). Granted, the $2 a month won’t put me in the poorhouse, but the speed issue has always been frustrating, and it’s always acted a little buggy for me. One of the features Jungledisk boasts is that you can sync multiple computers “effortlessly”. I don’t know if I’d agree with the effortless part, but nowadays, I use my laptop as my primary computer for both work and personal, so syncing is of little importance to me.

Enter Arq. I ran across this little gem in my RSS feed reader, thanks to a post on AppStorm.

According to app author Stefan, “the overhead of S3 PUT requests becomes a big performance problem when uploading many small files, so Arq combines small files together into ‘pack files’ to dramatically improve network performance”, which is why it kicks Jungledisk’s ass when it comes to speediness. (I added that last bit.)

I already have an AS3 account, since I helped out during the Iran elections and set up a proxy server using AS3 to enable the citizens of Iran to continue to communicate with the outside world after the government started shutting off their access to web services. I kept the account to use the fabulous Automatic WordPress Backup plugin, which backs up my (numerous and largely inane) blogs every night.

Simply put, this app couldn’t be more simple. It took me as long to install it and set it up as it did for me to download (it’s less than 4MB).

It comes pre-set to exclude trash, logs and caches, but you can add additional rules for exclusion as well.

By default, it will back up your ~user directory (excluding the aforementioned trash, logs and caches), but you can easily add additional directories as well. Drag and drop a folder into Arq to add it for automatic backup (including network drives). Drag and drop from a backup to immediately start restoring. It really is that easy.

Following the initial backup, Arq automatically makes incremental backups every hour, every day, uploading just the files that have changed since your last backup. Arq keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month.

If you’re worried about getting hit with a huge AS3 account bill, don’t sweat that either. Arq lets you set a maximum budget for backups based on AS3 pricing. Arq also de-dupes your files, so you’re never storing the same files twice. It automatically drops the oldest backups to keep within the budget and keeps backup history for as long as you want.

Arq costs $29, and comes with a free 30-day fully functioning trial. Check it out for yourself by downloading it at the Haystack Software website, or hit them up with questions on their Twitter account.

Sure, one could argue that the AS3 monthly fees would add up to a $299 Time Capsule soon enough – but the ability to access and backup from anywhere is a big plus for me, not to mention the encryption, redundancy, privacy and speed of AS3. Amazon does charge an additional fee for upload/download, but they just extended their free upload pricing until November 1, 2010, so go ahead and give it a try.

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I posted about the gorgeous BookBook laptop case for the 15″ Macbook Pro back in January on TehAwesome.Net, and have been impatiently waiting for a 17″ model. They’re finally available (first come, first serve!), and I received mine today.

The BookBook is a hand-crafted leather laptop case that when closed, looks like an antique leatherbound book. I doubt very much it would contribute to the security of carrying your Macbook, since I’d be just as likely to steal a sexy awesome leatherbound book as I would a sexy laptop, but it’s sure pretty to look at, and one of the most unique laptop cases I’ve seen. Others include the Newspaper laptop sleeve from MiteMite, and the Shuky sleeve that looks like a manilla envelope.

First things first, the quality of design and craftsmanship is outstanding. Everything from the distressed leather to the stitching is perfect, and it feels incredibly sturdy – more so than I would have imagined. The zipper doesn’t seem at all flimsy, and the leather that attaches it to the main body of the case is thick, and reinforced with suede on the inside. (The BookBook comes in classic black and red. I ordered the red, although both are beautiful.)

It’s a little larger than I expected, sticking out about an 3/4 from the top of the screen, and 3/4 of an inch beyond the bottom of the laptop, but I suppose that’s to be expected so that it will fit properly when the case is closed. I’m more used to the Case-Mate hard leather case that I have had since I bought my laptop, which solves this issue by way of a flexible gusset at the hinge.

Side note: I love the Case-Mate hard leather cases. I was only lured away from them by the sheer coolness of the BookBook, but I’d still strongly recommend them any day. I am pretty rough on my laptop, commuting with it through New York City for 4.5 hours a day when i go to the office, and I’ve had the same Case-Mate case for years, with almost no sign of wear and tear. Those things are tough!

The issue I have with the BookBook is actually with the straps. Here’s a short (< 2 minute) video of how the straps work. Sorry for the shakiness, I was rushing to get this done in between conference calls. Also, don’t mind teh kitteh. Or the mess.

As you can see in this video, I suck at taking video and I desperately need to re-paint my nails. Oh, also, you can see what I mean about the straps.

I sent an email to TwelveSouth, the manufacturer, asking about the straps:

Hi there – I received my 17″ BookBook case, and it’s just as beautiful as I thought it would be. I have a few questions/concerns though….

Is there no strap for the bottom to hold the case onto the bottom part of the computer? I admit I’m a little surprised that the straps that hold the case onto the top piece are black and actually cover the top left and right of the screen. This is such a beautiful cover, it seems impossible to me that the attachment mechanism would be so ugly and intrusive. Even my hard leather case that I have used for years includes clear straps that do not obstruct any part of the screen.

This is disappointing to the point where I may actually return it, which saddens me, as I have been waiting for a 17″ BookBook since I first saw the 15″ model months ago.

Andrew from TwelveSouth immediately replied to me, (really, 45 minutes later, and it probably took him at least 20 to write the email) with an explanation that makes perfect sense, but still bums me out:

Hey Snipe,

Thanks for the email and comments. My name is Andrew and I designed the BookBook. Just wanted to explain our thinking on the case and it’s features. If it doesn’t meet your needs – by all means return it. 99 dollars is way to much to pay for something and not absolutely ‘love’ it. That said, here’s what we had in mind for those straps.

The primary reason for the straps at the top only is to allow the BookBook case to close – and also open the MacBook lid itself (unibody only – the silver key version requires that release button on the front). Using it like this, the BookBook can stay basically ‘attached’ to the MB. When opened past 90 degrees for use, the corner straps should just clear the screen corners too. If it’s close, you could push back the screen angle a little bit – or slide the MB more towards you. Either one of these adjustments should clear the corner straps from the corners of the screen.

That said – the overall design of the case was to use it more like a notebook sleeve – slipping it in and out for use – and also possibly carrying it in an additional bag or backpack – was what we had in mind. We never really intended to ‘strap it in’ – we wanted it to slip in-and-out – just like a neoprene sleeve – only better, cooler and more protective once inside. The two straps just added the easy option to use it while still partially contained. (Actually – my favorite way to use it is to use the BookBook as a riser of sorts. I take My MB out and set it directly on top of my BookBook. It adds a little height and angle to the keyboard).

Sorry for the rambling email. I hope our intentions for the BookBook are at least a little clearer now. And again – if it doesn’t completely meet your expectations, please don’t hesitate to contact us again to request a refund. We really do want you to not just like your BookBook – we want you to love it.

Thanks again for your feedback and email,

Andrew

So as you can see, they did have a reason for the decisions they made regarding the straps. Major, major props to TwelveSouth for being so quick to reply to me, and to explain their decision in such detail. It didn’t come across to me as rambling – it came across as a passionate explanation from someone who loves the product they sell – and that’s awesome.

Less awesome is the fact that I thought I was buying a case, not a sleeve. My work environment may not be typical, but it suits me well. Two days a week, I work from home, the other 3 days, I commute to the city. On the days I work from home, my “office” is usually the couch, using the armrest of the couch as my laptop desk. Because there is a fair amount of jostling (and the constant threat of me or one of my spastic pets) knocking it over, something that actually attaches to my laptop is arguably critical.

At this point, my only suggestions to TwelveSouth would be to either re-label the item on their website that so that it’s more clear that this is meant to be a sleeve, not a case – or make a second model that is meant to be be a true case.

If you’re looking for an extremely sexy (if a little spendy) laptop sleeve that will definitely turn heads, BookBook is an excellent choice. If you’re looking for a case for your laptop to basically live in 24/7, this might not be the best choice. I haven’t decided if I’m going to try to jerry rig some straps, or if I’ll return it, but it’s undeniably a work of art regardless.

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WordPress 3.0, code name “Thelonious”, has been released, and it brings multi-site functionality as part of the core. As someone with far too many blogs of my own, I thought this would be a great time to start switching them all over, and let you know what you’re in for if you choose to do the same.

Previously, if you wanted to run multiple sites from one core installation of WordPress, you would install WPMU.

I had tossed that idea around a lot over the past year, since I run several websites that run on WordPress, but I had heard from enough people who ran into plugin/MU conflict issues that made things go ‘splody ‘splody that I opted not to. So instead, every time a new version of WordPress came out, I’d end up upgrading around 20 installs. Blech.

With version 3.0 of WordPress, the ability to create multiple sites using one install of WordPress is built right into the core, so no need to fool around with WPMU. The temptation was too great this time, so I decided to give it a whack. It was not what I would call a smooth process, but it wasn’t terrible either.

STOP: If you are already running WPMU and you just want to figure out how to upgrade your existing WPMU sites to WordPress 3.0, you’re reading the wrong article. Try this one instead.

Goals

What I wanted to get out of this was to have one main core install, but run multiple sites on their own domains that all pulled from that main core, so upgrading to later versions would mean upgrading one core instead of a dozen or two. These properties remaining at their current separate domain names (such as www.crankyhaiku.com, www.geekhaiku.com etc) was critical, both because of search engine optimization and for branding reasons.

Upgrading

The normal upgrade part was flawless, as WordPress upgrades tend to be these days. Automatic upgrade has never quite worked for me, so I always do a manual upgrade. It takes longer to upload the files, but it’s a pretty painless process. So to upgrade to 3.0, I did the usual:

• backup (which I didn’t actually have to do, since I automatically backup to the Amazon Cloud every night using Automatic WordPress Plugin) but I’m paranoid
• delete the wp-admin directory
• delete the wp-includes directory
• upload everything in the WordPress package – except for wp-content – to the web root
• hit the upgrade script to trigger the database updates

Flawless, as usual. Not so much as a hiccup. Now came the trickier part – adding the “Network” functionality previously available in WPMU to start to consolidate sites.

Creating a Multi-Site Network

I can’t speak for how easy or difficult this normally was with WPMU, so unfortunately I can’t tell you how this process compares to a normal WPMU setup. It wasn’t awful, but it was definitely buggy.

The WordPress documentation on Creating a Network walks through the basics well enough, so I suggest you start there so you know what to expect.

Note: You will not be able to go through the wizard in your WordPress admin until you deactivate ALL of your plugins. You can obviously re-enable them later, but I found that many of them did not keep their original settings.

I suspect this might be because I chose “network activate” instead of just plain “activate”. I had wanted to make those plugins available for all sites in the network, and didn’t realize that it would wipe out my existing snipe.net settings when I did so. Oh well. (Incidentally, that explains why you might see some weird stuff on the site until I have a chance to go through everything one by one. Double “related posts” bits at the end of the articles, Apture wasn’t working, etc.) All of the settings are fixable, but it may take you a little time to figure out what’s been lost, and what you have to do to set it back to the way it was before.

Editing Your wp-config.php

Beyond the setup in your WordPress admin, you’ll need to make a few changes to your wp-config.php file and your htaccess file. I hadn’t updated my wp-config for several versions, so I decided to use the wp-config-sample.php file and just pull my existing database variables over. Whether you use your old wp-config.php or start fresh with the stock WordPress sample, you’ll need to add the following to your wp-config.php, just above the comment that says “/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */”

define( 'MULTISITE', true );
define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true );
$base = '/';
define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'www.yoursite.com' );
define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );

If you followed my suggestion and read the WordPress documentation on creating a network (you did read that, right?), you’ll see that you have two choices for how your network will be set up: sub-domain (blah1.yourdomain.com, blah2.yourdomain.com) or directory-based (yourdomain.com/blah1, yourdomain.com/blah2). Make sure you think this one through before you get started, since there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to switch between the two.

As I mentioned, I didn’t want my sites to live at subdomain.snipe.net, or snipe.net/blogname – I wanted them to live at their own urls. I also didn’t want a bunch of crap littering up my document root. The easiest way to do this on Rackspace Cloud Sites is through a combination of setting up a site alias, and using mod_rewrite to handle domains:

• Set up a domain alias, like secondblog.com, and point it to originalblog.com
• Modify the mod_rewrite rules in your htaccess access file
• In your site preferences, point the blog url to the aliased domain name

If you’re not on Rackspace Cloud Sites, you can just follow the directions in the WordPress documentation.

Tweaking Your .htaccess

You’ll need to make sure the bit below is in your htaccess file – but your WordPress Network Setup wizard will point that out to you anyway

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

One thing to look out for besides having to reset your plugin preferences: when I created my Network, setting this site as the default, it automatically tried to set the url as snipe.net/blog. I’m not sure why it did this, and I’m certain I didn’t add it anywhere, but when I committed the changeover to Network, all of my urls were broken (since snipe.net/blog/ doesn’t exist). It was a quick change that you can handle via the Settings menu, but watch out for it and be sure to test your links once you’ve made the switch.

Importing Blogs

Now that you’ve got a Network set up, you have actually add them to the Network so that they’re using the same core. I expected this to be a much bigger pain in the ass than it ended up being. All I had to do was go to the original admin, go to TOOLS > EXPORT and download the XML file. Then go into my WordPress 3.0 admin, select the site I wanted to admin, and go to TOOLS > IMPORT > WORDPRESS, and upload the XML file. Worked perfectly, so far as I can tell.

Security Notes

Consolidating all of your WordPress sites into one multi-site install has many benefits, the most obvious one being that it’s easier to maintain one core install than updating every single instance of WordPress you run. That said, you may want to consider a few things:

While one install is probably more “secure” than multi-installs in the real world simply because you’re more likely to keep one site updated than dozens, there are a few things to consider.

If you run multiple WordPress blogs under the same user (the same account, in Rackspace Cloud Sites), all of the files are owned by the same linux user and group. This means that if one of your WordPress installs ends up compromised, either because you forgot to upgrade one of them, or because of a vulnerability in your hosting company, once an attacker has access to one of your blog installs, they have access to any other files owned by that user. Which means all of your other blogs, even the ones that are running current WordPress versions.

Along this same line of thought, if you’re running multiple WordPress installs under different users and you end up consolidating them to take advantage of the multi-site functionality, do so understanding that in this scenario, all of your blogs will be owned by the same user/group in the same webspace, so one vulnerability could easily turn into a much bigger problem.

Conversely, tracking down backdoors and maliciously modified files could potentially be easier, since you have fewer installs to search through.

WordPress has been much better about quickly patching holes, and being proactive about finding vulnerabilities. If your site ends up getting hacked, these days it’s more likely to be a vulnerable plugin, an outdated install you forgot all about, or a PC virus that added your FTP login to a botnet – not the core WordPress install itself. I say this with a certain amount of confidence, since I have restored at least two-dozen hacked WordPress sites (not mine) since the beginning of the year, and have therefore spent countless hours investigating the attack, identifying the vector, and writing up summaries to post to badwarebusters.org in an effort to help other people facing the same hack.

To be clear, running a multi-site install isn’t any riskier than running multiple blogs under the same user. But if you’re currently running your blogs under different users, you should at least be aware of how that could potentially impact you.

Final Thoughts

My thought is that it might have been smarter to install WPMU, and then upgrade to 3.0, since the upgrade process for a WPMU setup to 3.0 seems like it was a little less wonky, but I don’t really know.

I’ve really only just started playing with this during the fragment of free time I had today (work has been brutal for the past month or so). So far, pulling the theme in has been as simple as downloading them from their respective old WordPress installs and uploading them to the new 3.0 themes directory and activating them so that they’re available to the rest of the sites in the network.

And certainly, if you’ve found an easier way to get this done, please let me know in the comments.

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You’re gonna love this. And by love I mean be filled with rage. I started receiving emails from people today, frustrated that they could no longer set a specific tab as their default landing tab in Facebook. Everyone assumed it was a bug. It’s not.

UPDATE May 20, 10:45AM: Facebook has actually apologized and done a complete 180 in the last 12 hours and they have reversed this decision. I’m leaving the original post up for reference, but as of right now, they have reverted back to the original way it worked, where any page admin can set default tabs, regardless of the size of their fan base.

From their developer forums:

As of last night, we’ve removed the recently-added authentication requirement for setting custom landing tabs on Pages. The requirement was instituted as part of a Pages quality initiative, and we apologize for the inconvenience this caused to our developer and business community. We are re-investigating the situation, and will not make any further changes without first giving our community standard notice and lead-time.

Thanks for all your feedback,
Matt Trainer

The Facebook platform is known for being exceptionally buggy, so most “me too”ers assumed it was a bug and patiently awaited a bug fix confirmation from Facebook. The question went unanswered for a day, until finally a Facebook employee dropped this bombshell.

Hello all,

We apologize for not messaging this earlier. Facebook recently made a change requiring that Pages be authenticated before enabling the ability to set a landing tab beyond Wall or Info. To be eligible for authentication, a Page must have greater than 10k fans or the Page admin must work with their ads account manager. If you are already working with an account representative, please contact that representative to begin the authentication process. If you do not work with an account representative, you can use this contact form to inquire about working with an account representative.

Also, for advertisers who don’t have a representative or 10k fans, and want to run ads and land users on a specific tab, you can still do so with standard Facebook ads by making their Destination URL as the URL incl. your tab. Unfortunately, this currently will not work with “Fan” ads.

Thanks,
Matt Trainer

What this means is that Facebook Fan Page admins can no longer specify a default landing tab for their fan page UNLESS they have 10k or more fans, OR they “have an account manager”. Having an account manager sounds great, right? The thing is, you have to spend at least $10k in Facebook advertising before they’ll even talk to you, let alone give you an account manager. That contact form leads to the “how much money are you willing to spend with us” form, and if your answer is less than $10k, don’t expect them to help you.

So once again, the little guy gets screwed. It started in November with their charges to their contest/promotional guidelines, which were also rolled out quietly with little or no notification to developers or users, which dictated something very similar. Certain types of promotions now have to be approved by an account manager. Only you don’t get an account manager unless you spend upwards of $10k in media buys.

Note that it appears as though this is only effective moving forward. If you’ve already set a default tab on your Facebook Fan page, they’re not going to take it away from you. At least not at this point. But as of yesterday, if you hadn’t already set a default tab, you won’t be able to do so without meeting one of the 10k requirements mentioned above.

I’m not even going to talk about the recent Facebook privacy issues. This isn’t the post for it, and honestly, I don’t have the energy to open that gigantic can of worms right now. But with those recent changes on top of this, I have to ask WTF they are thinking over there. Fuck you, Facebook.

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In a previous tutorial, you learned how to Extend Facebook Static FBML Tabs with Dynamic Content, and now we’re back to show you how to take it even further by creating sub-nav tab navigation within your Static FBML microsite using only DynamicFBML.

The previous tutorial, I walked you through how to use clicktohide and clicktoshow to enhance your Facebook Fan Page tab. By utilizing these built-in Facebook functions, we can get creative and make image galleries, slide shows, or micro-sites within a single Facebook Fan Page tab. This is especially handy if you’re trying to fit a lot of content into a single tab, but don’t want to have one long scrolling mess of a tab. While hand-written FBJS is always an option, Facebook makes it really easy to accomplish this with only the most basic coding skills.

(That said, if you haven’t read the first tutorial, it will probably be helpful for you to read that one first before continuing with this one – I assume you understand the concept of clicktohide and clicktoshow here.)

So what you’ll end up with is a single Facebook Fan Page tab that has a “main” navigation that switches content within that single tab, and an additional subnavigation menu that switches content within that one section of the tabbed content. It sounds more confusing than it actually is – click here for a demo.

This is what we created in the previous tutorial:

And this is what we’re going to create in this one:

Similar to the example in the first tutorial, we’re going to do all of this magic simply by using CSS, HTML and the clicktohide and clicktoshow functions. In fact, what we’re doing here isn’t that different at all from what we did the first time, but I get a metric-assload of emails asking me how to to it, so here it is.

<!-- Now set the main tab navigation -->
<a href="#" clicktoshow="nav1" clicktohide="nav2,nav3">Home</a>
<a href="#" clicktoshow="nav2" clicktohide="nav1,nav3">Demo Tab</a>
<a href="#" clicktoshow="nav3" clicktohide="nav1,nav2">Locations</a>
<br />
<br />

<!-- start the div for the first main nav tab - nav1 -->
<div id="nav1">
	<p>Home content</p>
</div>
<!-- end the div for the first main nav tab - nav1 -->

<!-- start the div for the second main nav tab - nav2 -->
<div id="nav2" style="display: none;">
	<h1>Example Tabbed Subnav in Microsite</h1>
	<hr />
	<a href="#" clicktoshow="tab2subnav1" clicktohide="tab2subnav2,tab2subnav3">Subnav One</a>
	<a href="#" clicktoshow="tab2subnav2" clicktohide="tab2subnav1,tab2subnav3">Subnav Two</a>
	<a href="#" clicktoshow="tab2subnav3" clicktohide="tab2subnav1,tab2subnav2">Subnav Three</a>
	<hr />
	<br />

	<!-- start the div for the first subnav tab - tab2subnav1 -->
	<div id="tab2subnav1">
		<p>Subnav one content</p>
	</div>
	<!-- end the div for the first subnav tab - tab2subnav1 -->

	<!-- start the div for the second subnav tab - tab2subnav2 -->
	<div id="tab2subnav2" style="display: none;">
		<p>Subnav two content</p>
	</div>
	<!-- end the div for the second subnav tab - tab2subnav2 -->

	<!-- start the div for the third subnav tab - tab2subnav3 -->
	<div id="tab2subnav3" style="display: none;">
		<p>Subnav three content</p>
	</div>
	<!-- end the div for the third subnav tab - tab2subnav3 -->
</div>
<!-- end the div for the second main nav tab - nav2 -->

<!-- start the div for the third main nav tab - nav3 -->
<div id="nav3" style="display: none;">
	<h1>Locations</h1>
	<p>Locations content</p>
</div>
<!-- end the div for the third main nav tab - nav3 -->

And that’s it. That’s the whole code snippet. For clarity, I have stripped out all of the extra styling, text and fancy button treatments. If you want the exact code used for the demo, scroll down further in the page – I’ve included that as well.

I’ve commented the code pretty liberally, but just to recap what we’ve done, we created the normal main microsite divs, nav1, nav2, and nav3. These are the “buckets” that contain the top-level “tabs”, same as we did in the first tutorial. What we’ve added is a second, smaller set of buckets and corresponding nav. We use the exact same method of clicktohide and clicktoshow – the only different is what we’ve name the smaller bucket divs, and where they live. The div structure works out to be something like this:

[nav1 div]
– nav 1 content
[/nav1 div]

[nav 2 div]
– [subnav 1 div]
– subnav 1 content
– [/subnav 1 div]

– [subnav 2 div]
– subnav 2 content
– [/subnav 2 div]

– [subnav 3 div]
– subnav 3 content
– [/subnav 3 div]

[nav3 div]
– nav 3 content
[/nav3 div]

As promised, here’s the exact code snippet, line by line, that was used to create the demo page.

<!-- let's set the style for those fancy buttons -->
<style type="text/css">
.awesome, .awesome:visited {
	background: #222 url(http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/alert-overlay.png) repeat-x;
	display: inline-block;
	padding: 5px 10px 6px;
	color: #fff;
	text-decoration: none;
	-moz-border-radius: 5px;
	-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
	-moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
	-webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
	text-shadow: 0 -1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
	border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
	position: relative;
	cursor: pointer;
}

.awesome:hover {
background-color: #111; color: #fff;
}

.awesome:active {
top: 1px;
}

.awesome, .awesome:visited, .medium.awesome, .medium.awesome:visited {
font-size: 13px;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 1;
text-shadow: 0 -1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
background-color: #630030;
}

.large.awesome, .large.awesome:visited {
font-size: 14px;
padding: 8px 14px 9px;
}

h1 {
color: #a9014b; font-size: 26px;
}

p {
font-size: 15px;
}
</style>

<!-- Now set the main tab navigation -->
<strong><a href="#" clicktoshow="nav1" clicktohide="nav2,nav3" class="large awesome">Home</a></strong>
<strong><a href="#" clicktoshow="nav2" clicktohide="nav1,nav3" class="large awesome">Demo Tab</a></strong>
<strong><a href="#" clicktoshow="nav3" clicktohide="nav1,nav2" class="large awesome">Locations</a></strong>
<br />
<br />

<!-- start the div for the first main nav tab - nav1 -->
<div id="nav1">
	<img src="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/alison-fixed1.jpg" align="right"/>
	<h1>Default Content </h1>
	<p>Click on the "Demo Tab" above  to see an example of
	multi-level tabbing in a purely FBML microsite.
	With a little practice and patience, you could
	recreate a fairly large website using this method.
	(The content of these subnavs are quotes from
	Monty Python and the Holy Grail, for your entertainment.)</p>
</div>
<!-- end the div for the first main nav tab - nav1 -->

<!-- start the div for the second main nav tab - nav2 -->
<div id="nav2" style="display: none;">
	<h1>Example Tabbed Subnav in Microsite</h1>
	<hr />
	<strong><a href="#" clicktoshow="tab2subnav1" clicktohide="tab2subnav2,tab2subnav3" class="medium awesome">Subnav One</a></strong>
	<strong><a href="#" clicktoshow="tab2subnav2" clicktohide="tab2subnav1,tab2subnav3" class="medium awesome">Subnav Two</a></strong>
	<strong><a href="#" clicktoshow="tab2subnav3" clicktohide="tab2subnav1,tab2subnav2" class="medium awesome">Subnav Three</a></strong>
	<hr />
	<br />

	<!-- start the div for the first subnav tab - tab2subnav1 -->
	<div id="tab2subnav1">
		<p style="color: red; text-weight: bold;">Hey, this
		is the content for <strong>Subnav One</strong>!
		You can put photos, text, even videos in here.</p>
		<p>Bravely bold Sir Robin rode forth from Camelot.
		He was not afraid to die, oh brave Sir Robin.
		He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways,
		brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin.
		He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed
		into a pulp, or to have his eyes gouged out,
		and his elbows broken. To have his kneecaps
		split, and his body burned away, and his limbs
		all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Robin.
		His head smashed in and heart cut out, and his
		liver removed, and his bowels unplugged, and
		his nostrils raped and his bottom burned off and his penis... </p>
	</div>
	<!-- end the div for the first subnav tab - tab2subnav1 -->

	<!-- start the div for the second subnav tab - tab2subnav2 -->
	<div id="tab2subnav2" style="display: none;">
		<p style="color: blue; text-weight: bold;">Hey,
		this is the content for <strong>Subnav Two</strong>!
		You can put photos, text, even videos in here.</p>
		<p>When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone
		said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp,
		but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank
		into the swamp. So I built a second one.
		That sank into the swamp. So I built a third.
		That burned down, fell over, then sank into
		the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's
		what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in
		all of England. </p>
	</div>
	<!-- end the div for the second subnav tab - tab2subnav2 -->

	<!-- start the div for the third subnav tab - tab2subnav3 -->
	<div id="tab2subnav3" style="display: none;">
		<p style="color: green; text-weight: bold;">Hey,
		this is the content for <strong>Subnav Three</strong>!
		You can put photos, text, even videos in here.</p>
		<p>Follow. But. Follow only if ye be men of valour,
		for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a
		creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought
		with it and lived. Bones of full fifty men
		lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you
		do doubt your courage or your strength,
		come no further, for death awaits you all with
		nasty, big, pointy teeth. </p>
	</div>
	<!-- end the div for the third subnav tab - tab2subnav3 -->
</div>
<!-- end the div for the second main nav tab - nav2 -->

<!-- start the div for the third main nav tab - nav3 -->
<div id="nav3" style="display: none;">
	<img src="http://www.snipe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/alison-grr.jpg" align="right"/>
	<h1>Locations</h1>
	<p>This is the locations "page". You can put text, images, even video here.</p>
</div>
<!-- end the div for the third main nav tab - nav3 -->

The above is the exact code snippet I used to create that demo page, specifically. (In other words, please don’t email or comment asking me for the source. This is ALL there is, including the yummy button styling.)

As long as you properly nest your divs (and use valid HTML with no wonky or open tags), this will work every single time. The names of the divs don’t matter, as long as they match the clicktohide/clicktoshow div names you’re specifying in the nav.

If it doesn’t work when you try it, and you’re 100% sure you copy+pasted exactly from this tutorial, try again later. Sometimes Facebook has issues, and the only way to work around it is to wait until they’re not having issues.

I’d like to once again remind you that you’re not at all restricted to using the clicktohide and clicktoshow functions in the way I’ve outlined them here. My goal isn’t to show you the only things that are possible , but rather to get you familiar with the concepts so that you can use your own imagination and apply them in unique and exciting ways.

If you’ve done something cool with clcicktohide/clicktoshow (and let’s not forget clicktotoggle from the last tutorial), make sure you drop a link in the comments. I love to see what other people are working on. It makes my own raging Facebook development Hell a little easier to bear.

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Also known as “The only good thing Auto-Tune has ever been used for. Ever. Except maybe this.” This project isn’t particularly new, and I have been basking in the geekiness of this music for a while, but I just realized I neglected to share it with you. What a horrible, selfish whore I am.

(Incidentally, this isn’t a filler piece, even if it may seem that way. I’m partway through several very cool tech posts, including tips on how to write more secure web apps, a review of a fabulous penetration testing tool I have been trying out, and one on taking FBML even further to create a multi-layered FBML mini-site. I’m not slacking off, I promise.)

The Symphony of Science is a musical project headed by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. While I cannot speak to the specific process John uses to create these amazing songs, the end result is touching, almost ethereal music that is geekiness personified. Don’t take my word for it though – check out my favorite, The Unbroken Thread:

This piece is particularly touching to me, as I have had the surreal honor of getting to meet Jane Goodall, and talk with her a bit at a very small wellness conference in Colorado a few years back. Jane Goodall has always been a personal hero of mine, and after getting to meet her, and hearing her speak at that conference, my esteem for her only grew. She’s got it all – balls the size of coconuts, wisdom, grace, elegance – and an almost tangible presence of peace and calmness about her.

So to see her mixed in with Carl Sagan and David Attenborough – wow. Just wow. I can barely make it through this song without my eyes getting a little misty.

But if that hippie shit isn’t your thing, check out these two uber-geeky songs:

The music is free to download, so make with the clicky, pronto.

Visit the website, learn more about John and what he is trying to accomplish through this project, watch the videos, follow them on Twitter, and sign up for the mailing list so you can be notified of new masterpieces.

And please – if you can spare some change – consider donating to the project. I did. I sent John money, and a note with my deepest thanks for doing this. This music validates and celebrates adult geeks everywhere, and draws in a new generation of geeks and potential geeks everywhere. I’m a big fan of nerdcore music, as you probably know, but this goes beyond the otaku and geek pop culture, and touches me on an even deeper level.

And on that, enough with the serious touchy-feely stuff. I’ll be back with my regularly scheduled snark later. But have a go fuck yourself for good measure.

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Can you use Google Analytics on Facebook fan pages and fan page walls? You betcher sweet ass you can.

If you’ve ever created a Facebook fan page, you’ve probably realized that the “reporting” that Facebook provides is basically useless. Because Facebook limits the Javascript you can use on Fan Pages, you cannot implement your own analytics packages on fan pages. Or at least, that’s what they want you to believe.

For Facebook applications, there is an FBML tag that will allow you place your Google Analytics code on the canvas page – but this FBML will not work on fan pages, application tabs, or anywhere other than the canvas page.

Fortunately, implementing Google Analytics on your Facebook fan page is possible, with a little PHP trickery. The basic gist of the workaround is to include your Google Analytics code as an image instead of placing the javascript into the FBML code.

Rather than writing something from scratch, it makes more sense to direct you to a post on the Webdigi blog that offers a free set of PHP scripts that will let you do exactly that.

The long and short of what the guys over at Webdigi are doing with their scripts is simply to call a PHP script instead of an actual image file in the <img src> code. This is not unlike the “tracking pixels” that are often used in email newsletters, since Javascript is not an option there either. So the concept isn’t new, but it’s not common knowledge that it works on Facebook.

The PHP script they are calling contains the Google Analytics code, and accepts parameters so that you can re-use the script on multiple fan pages (or different pages in an application) simply by setting different parameters.

When your Static FBML tab, application tab or non-canvas app page loads, it loads that “image” as part of the page. That “image” then pings the PHP script, which pings Google Analytics. This could be adapted for other reporting systems as well, using the same concepts.

The guys do a nice job with their script, and they even offer a wizard that helps you figure out what you need to put where.

I had rigged up a script a few months ago, but I never really had the time to package it for the general public, make it easy to configure, and so on, so go ahead and check out their script package.

Using this method, you’ll even be able to set up funnels and goals for your Facebook fan page stats, and Webdigi offers a great breakdown on how to tell the difference between fan and non-fan activity on your fan pages in your reporting.

Enjoy!

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Let me start off by saying that this blog post is not meant as advice. Because if it were advice, the sheer magnitude of my hypocrisy would create a tear in the space-time continuum, and we’d all die. And while I’m all for causing the downfall of humanity, it’s not the right time. Yet.

Maybe it’s just me, but it sure seems like 95% of the blogs out there are complete and utter shit, although not for the reasons you probably think I mean. I’m not even counting blogs that have original-but-stupid ideas and opinions. I’m talking specifically about the blogs that have created an entire following around giving people advice that isn’t really advice.

“If you want to get more customers, you have to get their attention first!” No shit, sherlock.

“If you want to convert users to customers, you have to give them something of value.” Thanks, Captain Obvious.

“If you want to build your blog readership, write about what you know.”

Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously?  (And don’t even get me started on the search engine optimization people.)

I would rather read a blog that I patently disagree with, whose ideas are completely idiotic, than to read a blog that can’t manage a single fucking original thought once in a while. Even if you can’t be right, at least be original for fuck’s sake.

Blogging has turned into a festering cesspool of people who are exalted as brilliant because they say exactly what people already know. “Wow – I couldn’t agree more! He’s so smart!”

And that’s why it works. People like to feel smart, so when others post something they agree with, they feel good that their completely obvious idea has been validated by someone else. Nevermind the fact that it was validated by someone else because it’s COMMON FUCKING SENSE. It’s like watching an episode of Crossing Over with John Edwards. “I’m sensing a name that starts with J…. John… James… Jerry… ”

If the people reading these blogs actually feel like they have stumbled across some hidden nugget of wisdom, they should probably reconsider a career in marketing and start thinking about one that involves a name tag, and memorizing the phrase “Do you want fries with that?”

The only thing that annoys me more than the people who post this drivel are the thousands of people who don’t realize that they are seriously overestimating their own potential, and who only encourage bloggers to post more of this crap by telling them how wise they are.

That, and the irony of these bloggers telling people they need to be original and offer something of value in order to be successful.

It’s created this vile, retarded Ouroboros and it pisses me off.

People have made a career out of telling people what they already know because those people need and desire to be told what they already know. To that effect, I suppose they actually have at least taken their own advice. So that’s something. I guess. It’s become an insidious self-fulfilling prophesy. Jackholes who overstate the obvious become known for their wisdom by the dipshits who only think they’re wise because it wasn’t obvious to them.

Seriously, people. The very best marketers out there are the ones who understand human nature. They understand what makes people feel good, their selfish and petty motivations, their fears. They understand people, and it comes naturally to them.

If you’re not one of those people, find a new fucking career. And for the love of GOD stop blogging.

And stop reading blogs that try to convince you that you’re something more than the utterly average human being you really are. You will never be more than second-rate at your very, very best. On your very best day, you will be about as good at your job as a first year intern. Maybe. If you’re lucky. And if the intern is really high most of the time.

There’s no shame in admitting that marketing doesn’t come naturally to you. And if you’re really dead-set on this as your career path, spend your time reading psychology books, not blog posts by people who are no more qualified to be giving advice than you are. When you understand what motivates people, for good or evil, you become good at marketing. Whether you want to be or not.

If you need someone to tell you that social media only works when you are *social*, you’re a moron. If you believe that anyone who is telling you that you need to create fresh ideas with original thought is actually original or fresh, you’re a moron. And frankly, you deserve each other.

Put down the kool-aid, and go back to doing whatever the fuck it was you were doing for a living before the barrier to entry on the internet became low enough to let you start a blog.

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