To switch between accounts, click on the Account pulldown box at the top left of your page, from here you can select “Use Facebook as Page”, or “Switch back” to your personal account.

You do have to be careful, if you do not switch back your profile you may find yourself posting via the wrong account.

One of the extra benefits to this is that you can now see who has liked your page last.

If you login to one of your Fan Pages at the top left there are icons for Likes and Notifications, if anyone has liked your page since the last time you were logged into the page you can click the Like icon and see who the new members are.

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I used my holiday time to convert one of my own static sites. I wanted to use it as a case study in procedure and time. The site I converted was my Scripts and Database site, CyberCoded.com. This is one of my older sites and I have been too busy to convert it so I continued to manually add pages as needed.

I have about 10 hours invested in the whole process to convert this site. The bulk of the time is in the custom coding of a WordPress Theme from scratch to match an older site. There were 12 pages when I started and as some of the pages had different extensions I decided to convert the site using my favorite WordPress permalink structure and then redirect the old pages.

I used my Blank WordPress Theme so that I could start with a clean slate and match the design to the old site.

Here are the steps I took.

1. Installed WordPress in a Sub Folder
   • Set Privacy setting to OFF while I developed the site in a sub folder.
   • Modified the permalink to my favorite which is /%postname%/
2. Installed the Blank theme in the WordPress Themes folder.
   • I used FTP to upload the files into a new theme folder in WordPress.
3. Copied and matched elements from the old Style.css file into the WordPress Style.css
   • The blank theme has an empty CSS file.
   • The Body and Links were the only elements called out in the old CSS file.
   • Added Wrapper, Content, Header and Footer Divs to CSS.
4. Copied the Index.php file to home.php so I could have a custom Home page that would match the old page.
   • Simply copying the file like this makes a new home page with the home.php file.
5. Modified the WordPress code in the Home page to show each category and posts as lists.
   • Stripped out the common WordPress Loop
   • Created new code that loops through the categories and list each post per category.
   • Set the Category to sort in Descending order.
   • Set the Post titles to sort Title in ascending order
6. Created an Analytics.php file in the WordPress Theme to use throughout the site.
   • Retrieved the code from Google to use for analytics.php
7. Created a Header.php file within the WordPress Theme to add common header elements.
   • Modified the Title so that it would be SEO friendly, very similar to most popular SEO plugins.
   • Added a call to analytics.php file
8. Created a footer.php file in WordPress to add a common footer.
   • Used the code from the old static footer file for contact and info.
9. Created Single.php page
   • Added a Tweet This button from Twitter.
10. Created my Categories to match old site.
    • The old site had headers for each item type which I converted to Categories.
11. Copied each page from the old site into Textpad and removed any code that would interfere with WordPress.
12. Pasted each page into WordPress as a Post.
13. Created Tag Page.
    • Tag page list the excerpt for each Post that is tagged.
14. Created custom 404 page.
    • The 404 page shows a tag cloud to visitors.
15. Created Search page.
    • Search page only shows title for a matched post.
16. Widgetized and added a sidebar.
    • Create and set widgets in the functions.php file.
    • Add sidebar.php and corresponding code to use widgets.
    • Added a Facebook Like button.
    • Added RSS Button and link.
17. Copied the index.php from the WordPress sub folder to the root and modified the code to use WordPress from the Sub Folder.
18. Changed the Site Address within WordPress Admin to set the site in the root while leaving WordPress installed in the sub folder.
19. Redirected the old pages to the new WordPress pages using PHP header calls.
20. Installed and setup XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress Plugin

ALL DONE !

I copied the old Index file so we can see a before and after look.

Original Page versus New WordPress Site.

Most of the time was in the Theme setup. Each page took about 5 minutes to convert the content to a WordPress Post.

12 Pages, 10 hours

Think I will send my wife a bill and see if it gets paid, lol…

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The biggest benefit I see with the new Facebook Messages is the history for each conversation. Having a threaded history makes it much easier to keep up with a conversation without having to search through email for things that have been discussed in the past.

I also like the Other folder with the new Facebook Messages to filter out non critical or non important messages.

You can also send and receive images and texts from the interface which I think has a major impact on the younger generations as a lot of them simply use texting in lieu of email.

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I have read several blogs and listened to some podcasts that basically say there is no value to systems such as Foursquare and Facebook Places and that those who are using them are just wasting time checking in to locations.

Well, there is always another side to the story and I thought this picture would show there is a value to both the person checking in and the local businesses in the area that are listed on such systems.

Foursquare suggest The Horse's Mouth

While visiting Mickey’s Pizza in Buffalo, Texas I checked in to Foursquare. Although I already knew about The Horse’s Mouth Bookstore and Coffee Shop just down the street, it was nice to have Foursquare present me with a comment from another person who had checked in there before.

And this benefit is extended to the businesses as well.

What if I did not know about the coffee shop down the street?

This message is enough to get me to at least stop in and give them a look.

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These businesses realize that social media is as close to word of mouth advertising as it gets. And pretty much everyone agrees that there is no better marketing than word of mouth.

Even if they have a website, there is absolutely no reason not to take advantage of social media.

The social media playing field is probably as level as it gets for businesses of all sizes to reach and connect with their current and potential customers.

So why are so many small businesses hesitating getting on social media?

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They are not necessarily in any particular order.

1. TextPad
2. Firefox with FireBug extension.
3. Chrome Browser
4. Skype
5. Google Talk
6. Google Reader
7. Twitter
8. Facebook
9. WordPress
10. Email (Gmail)

As an extra mention, most of these are used on my desktop and my iPhone. I am still doing 99.9% of my work on an HP Mini 311 Verizon Netbook, which is simply amazing.

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Any Admin can now delete another Admin and any Admin can delete the entire page. Wow, this could get ugly.

I have been in situations where a customer has hired me to manage their Facebook page, and we had no way to remove the previous Admin, so this change is good in that aspect.  It also helps in cases where 3rd parties can create the page and hand it off to the business owner with the security that they can add or delete Admins as needed.

However, there should be some form of verification needed to delete an admin or page.

For all the wonderful things about Facebook, they do seem to lack an understanding of security and how it affects businesses in the real world.

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Google is making another run at Social Networking and using Gmail to do it this time. After their previous attempts this is probably their final shot at getting some traction with social networking, if they miss here, they should just forget about it. At first glance it appears that they acknowledge Twitter and Flickr but they are not going to help anyone lean towards Facebook.

Google Wave did not get it done, Orkut, Zingku, or how about Dodgeball?

As usual they are diving in with API support at Google Code.

I will not pass judgement until I have some real time to invest in Google Buzz, but looking over the API, it looks like they realize the importance of connectivity to other systems and keeping the system as open as possible.

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By default Facebook gives you an address such as http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1234456789.

As I have discussed before, once you have 25 friends or 25 fans you can change this default to something more meaningful, such as my Facebook Fan Page http://www.facebook.com/CyberCoded.

Here is another tip. The Facebook Vanity URL is not case sensitive and ignores characters such as the period (.) and the hyphen (-). You can use this to your advantage when showing your URL in print or telling someone the address.

Examples:

• My personal Facebook account I made the Vanity URL, facebook.com/david.cooley, I did this because I think it looks better in the address bar. However, when I tell someone my address I can tell them it is just facebook.com/davidcooley and it will take them to my page. Easier to say “Facebook dot com davidcooley” than to say “facebook dot com david dot cooley”.

• My Business Fan Page is facebook.com/cybercoded, however, I can change the capitalization so it is easier to read, such as facebook.com/CyberCoded

• facebook.com/Cyber-Coded
• facebook.com/Cyber.Coded
• facebook.com/david.cooley
• facebook.com/David-Cooley

As you can see there are several ways to modify the address in print or online to make it easier to read, and yet they all resolve to the same page.

To change your Facebook Address use the Facebook Username page.

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Another helpful function you can utilize is having multiple Admins assigned to a Fan Page so you can have someone else help you with your page design, programming and updating.

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