Tech for the Local Church
Facebook Fan Page Design – Part 2: Create a Micro Site

In part 1 of our series, we covered adding the FBML (Facebook Markup Language) application to our Fan Page. It shows up as a tab and accepts some basic HTML. One great example of this from Part 1 is here. Now we will move on to a more advanced technique that allows us to hide and reveal different sections of our page to mimic a micro site – a webpage within a webpage.
THE MENU
We are using a series of images as our menu buttons. To keep it simple, we will not use hover and click states – just a simple image as a link. If you want to use the image I created, feel free. I have made four different buttons for this example that will correspond with each “page”: Home, About, Map, & Contact.
BLOCKS AS PAGES

The basic concept at work here is that each “page” is actually a block of HTML code that contains the content for each of our pages. Only one block will show at a time, forcing the other blocks to be hidden. This hide/reveal technique is a bit of slide-of-hand to make the user imagine there are independent pages , when, actually, all the content is being served up from one page without the need to load a new page. Since we are operating within the confines of Facebook tabs, this is a perfect solution for our micro site.
THE CODE
When looking for tutorials like this, I found a lot of them were incomplete. Many sites assumed that the reader knew HTML, javascript and beyond… I wanted to be sure you had the EXACT code that I used so you will have someplace to start. Instead of give examples in the blog post, just download the whole document and have fun. Feel free to ask questions in the comments, too.
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about 1 year ago
Are you aware of why when i say "add to my page" it says no results. Can't seem to add it to my page
about 1 year ago
Our company just rolled out a new product called "Facebook for Churches." We are offering customized Facebook Church pages that include hyperlinks, video and more for a super duper low price. We will even train you or you can design your own and we will code your church page for you.
If you go to our Cadyn Development website and select the Facebook icon on the right, it will take you our Facebook page. Or http://www.facebook.com/churchFBMLfanpages
We'd love to connect with you!
about 1 year ago
Great part 2! At least your not trying to make money off this like some of the commenters here…. Can't wait for part 3
about 1 year ago
Hey Jeremy,
I just recommended your site to all of our Facebook followers. We only have 34 but we're growing.
We believe that Social Media is not about competition but collaboration. If we can help out in sending followers your way, we certainly will.
Great job!
about 1 year ago
This is wonderful! Thank you very much
about 1 year ago
Indeed, this is very helpful. But how'd you get rid of the left hand Facebook bar?
about 1 year ago
Just published this to help you out: http://ministryvault.com/tutorial/trick-out-your-…
peace,
Brook Drumm
about 1 year ago
Hey there!
I've tried adding some content to the second tab of my microsite but somehow it won't work. Instead of being displayed only in the second tab, both the content of tabs 1 & 2 appear at the same time. I've copied your example up above and added the follwing code:
<div id=”nav2”
/>
<img style=”width:540px” src =http://vlstatic.com/assets/events/music/kylie500.png alt=”Kylie Minogue” />
<span style=”font-size:3em”>Erlebe Kylie live in Oberhausen</span>
<span style=”font-size:2em”>18. März 2011 König-Pilsener-ARENA </span>
<span style=”font-size:2em”>Sei dabei! </span>
</div>
Which code snippet do I have to add in between the the div ids for tabs 1 & 2? Could you please help.
about 1 year ago
Thanks so much for you post. I've been trying to figure out how to do this.
Will the deprecation of FBML that went into effect 3/11/11 effect this?
Is there a way to link to a photo in facebook rather than linking to an outside source?