Facebook Fan Page & Fan Box – I’m a Sucker for Widgets

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Ever since Archon Digital created a Facebook Fan Page several months ago, it was only this December 2009 that I decided to put that Fan Box widget up on the sidebar just to see how it goes as a replacement to my Blogcatalog and MyBlogLog widgets which I removed after launching version 5.

So I guess I’m a sucker for widgets and always wanted to try out what I find nice more than what can possibly be effective.

The Fan Box widget came up as I decided rid myself of the two visitor widgets that I have had for more than a year. It was easy to configure as I edited it to fit the width of my sidebar.

So after a month of keeping the big Fan box with friend’s pictures, here some ideas I have that I think will make the widget perform better.

  • Should be more customizable and have the ability to style the widget according to the look and feel of your website.
  • It should load faster and consume less server resources
  • It should load all the time and not just most of the time

Those three points should make the widget become more interesting to bloggers. I gained more “fans” in a shorter span of time than in the time that the widget was not there but still it was not enough for me to keep the big bulky widget up as it was simply too big and clunky for my taste.

After observing how it gets my pages to load a bit slower, I decided to replace it for now with a smaller Fan Box configured without the logo and the fans’ images. The smaller version occupies less vertical space and does the same job of having a one-step process of gaining “fans” for your site. Here it is and see how less clunky it is.

Let’s see if it performs better and after another month I will check again make some more adjustments if needed, for now the widget stays.

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About Archon Digital

His obviously biased, first-hand accounts of his elaborate and sinister plans for world domination has been going on forever. He is a designer for both print and web, and though he sometimes calls himself a blogger, he appears more obsessed with Technology, WordPress, HTML5 and CSS3 than with the actual act of blogging. Mostly kept awake by gobs of coffee, he resorts to tinkering with this site until something breaks.

24 thoughts on “Facebook Fan Page & Fan Box – I’m a Sucker for Widgets”

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  6. I’ve used the Fan box widget not on my own blogs but on my client’s blog – as their request. In all cases the bigger version loads up slowly, or sometimes doesn’t load at all. When that happens the loading time of the page gets delayed! At one point the client decided to get rid of the widget anyway. Haha.
    .-= Gem´s last blog ..A Night with the Poetic Doctor =-.

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  10. With my site already loading slow (probably bec. its a WPMU), i customized mine a bit to minimize communication with facebook. I think you’re suggestion to just create an image and link to the fan page is better. Got to try that as well. But I need to find a better template (ahemmm, perhaps somebody out there is willing to make me a customized theme. Hehe).

    I too just joined the ‘bandwagon’ by creating a fan page for bloggista. We’ll see how it can help driving traffic. The only setback is that people from facebook tend to leave their comments on facebook pages rather than on the blog. hehe.
    .-= bloggista´s last blog ..Viva Pit Senor! – 30 Years of Cebu Sinulog =-.

    • The image linking to the site is definitely the best solution if load times and performance issues are to the considered, but there is a huge advantage of having a one-step process of converting your readers into “fans”.

      Facebook readers do tend to leave messages on the Facebook profile but maybe later on a better integration process will allow comments from FB to “auto-magically” appear on the blog’s comments.

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  12. i just love this tool. it really helped me on my internet marketing strats and plans – just imagine dropping a program to a 150k fan page? anyway, looking forward for my other fan page to hit 100k. :)

  13. It _is_ possible to control the stylesheet on the Facebook Fan Box..

    http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Fan_Box
    http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Talk:Fan_Box#How_to_Edit_the_CSS-Style

    You specify the location of your css (fully qualified URL to a stylesheet stored on your site, not facebook) in the tag. Facebook caches your stylesheet, so you have to trick it into updating its cache by appending a version number. (described in the links, above)

    If your fan badge also includes the “stream” (story area), the stream area will be a minimum of 300px tall (if I remember correctly). This is true even if you specify a smaller size for the entire badge in the tag. However, your Fan Box style sheet can specify the height…
    .page_stream { height: XXXpx; }

    I have a stylized version on my dance studio website (http://www.artofdancemadison.com) – transparent background, different color/size text, etc.

    I do experience slow page loads occasionally, as observed by the author.

    • Thanks Darrel for your feedback as it has come in just in time for me to decide what to do with the widget. It’s great to know there’s more options available for customizing the fan box and I just started to dig in to find out if I can implement this on some clients’ websites.

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