How To Become a Facebook Developer for the New iFrame Tabs for Pages

It is apparent that Facebook page admins are bit nervous about the new Facebook Fan Page iFrame for Tabs update released last week.

One of the biggest updates to Facebook Fan Pages is that FBML apps – which were used to customize Facebook Page tabs – will become obsolete on March 11th.  This means, after March 11th, you won’t be able to create new FBML apps for your Fan Pages.

Instead, what you’ll have to do to get customized tabs on your Facebook Fan Page is take advantage of the new iFrame for tabs.

Although most Facebook page admins are initially nervous about this update, my opinion is that it is a blessing, and a much needed addition in the arsenal of page admins in customizing their Fan Pages.

“Why is that?” you ask….

Because with the new Facebook Fan Page iFrame tabs, you can now integrate pure HTML, javascript, and iFrame’s into your Fan Pages – which is HUGE!!!

So I plan on writing quite about how to do this – because I know a lot of people are wondering.

You can see a couple of examples of customization I’ve already implemented on two pages that I admin – one of which is my Facebook page for this blog.

Social Media SEO – here I implemented an iFrame tabs that includes Google Adsense (which I’m actually making money off) and a couple of YouTube videos.

Cornerstone Church – here’s a custom iFrame tab where I built a template to broadcast our church services live directly within the Facebook platform.

You Must First Become  An Apps Developer

In order to start implementing the new iFrame’s for Facebook Fan Page tabs, you must first become an official apps developer on Facebook.

Now again, I’m going to be writing future posts on how to build your custom iFrame tabs – but for now I’m going to cover how to become a Facebook apps developer.

Here’s all you need to do to become an apps developer on Facebook:

1)  Go to https://developers.facebook.com/ – once you visit the URL, you’ll only see the latest article from the Facebook’s developer forum (which i strongly recommend you subscribe to – lot’s a great info).  Even as a developer, this has always been the easiest way for me to get to apps… but you must do #2 below as well.

2)  Click the “+Set Up New App” button – this button is found in the top right hand corner of the screen.  Once you click this button, you’ll now see the following screen that gives you directions on how to become a verified Facebook Apps developer:

You’ll notice there are 2 ways to become verified for creating apps:

1. Add a mobile phone number to your profile
2. Adding a credit card to your profile

Once you have verified your Facebook profile using one of the two methods above, you’ll now be ready to start creating Facebook apps.

Which means you’ll now be able to start creating iFrame apps for your Facebook tabs.

Again, I’ll be posting step by step instructions to build your Facebook Fan Page iFrame apps shortly – so stay tuned.