Facebook Pages

[babrewer 0]

I have a who wants a pretty sophisticated Facebook page experience, custom menus, response forms, sliders, etc. My client wants to maintain their current site AND their Facebook pages from within the same WP site, no sub-domains or folders. I'm new to Platform Pro and WP in general, but saw several posts about setting fixed page width to accommodate the iframes 520 px constraint. I'm assuming this can only be done site wide and not on a page by page basis. I also saw some suggestions for plugins like fan page connect and Facebook tab manager. Fan page connect seems great, but doesn't seem to work with Platform Pro set as the active template. Would love to see PP support templates and pages that are 520 px wide, just for the pages/content that is to be driven to Facebook via iFrames. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Rob 547]

First, let's start with one basic... If you've purchased Platform, you should have BOTH PlatformPro and PlatformBase installed on your site. PlatformBase is the one you should be activating. PlatformPro serves as the the engine driving the ship, while PlatformBase is the ship itself, steering the design and appearance of the site. Second; depending upon your template layout, it's definitely possible to include Facebook via iFrames or by plugin. Let's examine some options. 1. Finding a plugin that handles iFrames. Since you say you're new to WP as well as Pagelines, let me introduce you to http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins where you can search and find many thousands of great plugins. But a warning: They must be up to date to continue working. You'll need to make sure that the Compatibility (shown on the right) is up to or greater than the current WP version, which right now is 3.2.1. Next, make sure the plugin doesn't have people saying it's broken. Of course, you want a plugin that's had a decent number of downloads. Watch out for anything under 1,000 as it means it's either brand new and relatively untested, or, it isn't a popular one. And naturally, you want to look and see if there've been revisions so that you know the plugin author is serious about this. Many plugins are created, listed and then abandoned by their authors who get bored and move on. Who needs a plugin that simply stops working one day? Here's an example of a good plugin. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/iframe/ 2. Make sure your site's Template Layout has a Main Content Area larger than 520. Remember, we add padding, so if you want 520px, your layout needs to be 550px. and more than likely 552px. After logging in as Admin, you're in the Dashboard. Navigate on the left column to Appearances, then Themes and make sure PlatformBase is activated. Then, go up the left menu to PlatformPro. Clicking that link will open Platform Settings. Scroll down to Layout Editor and adjust the template layout to the widths you want. Again, based on padding, if you wanted a sidebar with a typical skyscraper of 160px wide, you need to have at least 192px to avoid it bleeding off the edge. To change width in the graphic layout, you move the cursor over the edge, click and drag. 3. You can use the Universal Sidebar in one of the templates to place the plugin (as a widget) in the content area if it doesn't have a shortcode. Sometimes plugins do have them, in which case you'd just add the shortcode to your page. 4. You'll probably want to create a static homepage and blog page. Let me know about that and I'll guide you there if you need the assistance.

[babrewer 0]

First off, thank you very much for the detailed response to my inquiry! I'm with you on the plugins as well as on using base as my template. Now, here's where my unfamiliarity with WP and PP shows. When I used the template editor, the smallest I can make the main content area is 800 px. I know I can use the custom css rules to set a width of 520 as required by Facebook. In fact, I've had some success creating a new, totally separate WP site, overriding the overall width of the site using custom CSS in PP and developing pretty robust, menu driven FB fan pages. The problem is I had to create a totally new WP site using network, and my client doesn't want to go back and forth between two different WP sites. They want to have a set of pages within their current WP production environment that are solely dedicated to driving the Facebook business (fan) page(s). The content on the FB pages would be a subset/superset of what they are driving via select posts and static page content to their existing site. I guess in a nutshell what I'm wondering is this.... Can I somehow set up a custom page and/or template (because those custom pages would still need a header, some navigation, contact links, a footer, etc, all less than 520 px wide) just for these pages? The existing pages in the site would stand alone using the template customization already in place. Thanks again for trying to help me, I know I'm not making this easy as most of your inquiries come from more seasoned WP users.