A Facebook Page lets you share your website with others, and allows news of your site and new posts to travel easily among Facebook Friends. It’s an easy way to allow those that might like your website to discover and share it.

How do you make a Facebook Page?

This post shows you how to start a FB Page, and begin populating it with content through automatic publishing from your WordPress blog. You can use some great third-party plugins to do this. The system I’ll outline here creates an automatic social sharing arm of your website, pointing new visitors and expanding your website’s reach without having to do any extra steps or having to write additional content.

Once you have your WordPress website set up, use the following steps to install a third-party plugin, create a Facebook Page, and connect the two. These steps will show you how to set up the connection so that you can either publish new posts automatically to your Facebook Page, or so that you can choose post-by-post whether to publish to your Faceboook Page by clicking a single button within the WordPress dashboard.

Step One:

Log in to Facebook under your personal account. You can create a personal account at facebook.com if you don’t have one already. And, it’s important to know that once you create a Facebook Page for a website or business, your personal Facebook account will not be visible or in any way publicly connected to the Facebook Page.

Create a new Page in Facebook by scrolling to the bottom of any Facebook screen and clicking the “Create a Page” link. The URL is: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. There a couple of steps to creating the Facebook Page, just choose one of the options appropriate to your business or website, and go through the steps of adding some information content to start. You can also upload a logo or photographic image for the Profile pic.

Step Two:

Download Otto’s Simple Facebook Connect plugin through your WordPress Dashboard. To do this, go to Add New, under Plugins, and search for Simple Facebook Connect, choosing to download the plugin and activate it through the WordPress Dashboard for your website. The plugin is by Otto (you can verify you have the right plugin by noting the plugin author before downloading), and includes many additional plugins that you can activate selectively to enable whatever functions you want or need. For this tutorial, let’s activate “SFC – Publish” under Plugins in the Dashboard.

On a side note, you will discover through following the rest of these steps, that I’m creating both a Facebook Application and a Facebook Page to perform this integration. If starting from scratch, you can use your Facebook Application as a Facebook Page, with all the same functions, but to me it has some disadvantages which have me deciding to set up a separate Facebook Page in addition to the Application that we need to connect Facebook to the WordPress website. First, a Facebook Page comes ready to list the number of friends on the sidebar. An Application Page in Facebook needs more configuration to be able to do this. Secondly, the Facebook Page, once it has 25 “Likes,” can have a traditional Facebook URL, or web address. This address can be more easily remembered if you tell it to anyone or list it on your website. The Application Pages in Facebook begin their URL addresses with app.facebook.com/something, while a standard Facebook Page is just facebook.com/something. While you can configure an Application Page to look just like a Facebook Page, I prefer to keep the easy existing layout of the Facebook Page, and just use the Application we need to create to forward the WordPress post excerpts to the Facebook Page, which comes configured the way I want without any alterations needed.

Step Three:

Use links from your WordPress Dashboard to connect to the right Facebook areas and create an application to facilitate connecting to your Facebook Page. Within the Settings sidebar panel, click Simple Facebook Connect to get to the Plugins Settings Page for the plugin. There’s you’ll see links to Facebook and a short series of instructions for creating a Facebook Application, and getting some codes you need to copy and paste into the plugin settings page. You’ll need to copy and paste three sets of letters and numbers into WordPress – the Facebook API Key, Facebook Application Secret, and the Facebook Application ID. You can get these three keys from Facebook after you create the Application. You’ll also need your Facebook Page ID (also called a Fan Page) if you’re creating a separate Facebook Page as illustrated in this tutorial. You can get this by going to your Facebook Page and copying it from the URL in your browser’s address bar. It’s a 15-digit number.

After you copy and paste these Main Settings into the plugin settings page, Save your changes and you’ll see some Publish Settings options appear on the settings page within WordPress. You can now officially connect your WordPress website to Facebook by clicking the three buttons there, and clicking “Allow” when the Facebook popup windows come up. You can also enable automatic publishing to your Facebook Page by clicking the box next to “Automatically Publish to Facebook Fan Page.”

Step Four:

Well, that’s pretty much it! If you already have Posts published on your website, you can go into any Post’s editing screen and see the Facebook Publishing buttons on the right-side sidebar, and publish excerpts with thumbnails of images to your Facebook Page. If you checked the “Automatically Publish” box in the plugin settings, any new Post published on your website will also publish to the Facebook Page.

Now, it would be smart to Share your Facebook Page with your Facebook friends if you have them, by going to your Page and clicking Share at the bottom left side of the page. By doing this, you’re recommending your page and asking your friends to “Like” the page. When you have 25 “Likes,” you can get a Facebook custom URL, or web address, for your Page. Mine will be http://facebook.com/500pixels when I choose it, but I have to wait until I have 25 “Likes.” If you want to help, go to the page, here, and click Like! Thanks in advance! My page is new, and I’m looking to get 25 likes to get my custom URL.

Oh, one more thing, FYI. This system allows for word of your website to spread more rapidly, by harnessing the power of the Facebook Sharing system and it’s Wall Posts. It works like this. Say someone “Likes” your Facebook Page. When you make a new Post in WordPress, and your setup from above posts an excerpt and image thumbnail on your Facebook Page, that Wall Post, with a link to your website, also appears on the Facebook Walls of all that person’s  Facebook friends. It means that every time you post something to your website, there’s potential for new readers to find out about your website. The number of possible connections to new readers can expand, not linearly, but exponentially, as more people “Like” your Facebook Page and therefore your website. That’s a great way of harnessing the power of Facebook Connections, so take advantage of the networking power of Facebook and use this setup to automate it as much as possible. You’ll expand your website’s reach much faster.

500pixels.com’s Full Service Installation comes with a year of hosting, 21 essential plugins, Facebook and Twitter integrations, and Flexsqueeze Theme (worth $127).

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The Flexsqueeze Theme lets you create any website or blog that you want, without touching a line of code, and without being a graphic designer! The thousands of possible choices and combinations of design features, visual graphics at your fingertips, and functional shortcodes and integrations makes Flexsqueeze the ultimate WordPress theme for internet marketing, business websites, or content blogs.

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The WordPress Dashboard is the place on the internet from where you log in and manage your website. Because the whole program sits on your server, connected to the internet, you can access your Dashboard from any computer, using just a web browser.

The first video in this series provides an overview of the WordPress Administration Panel, which provides access to the functions and features of your WordPress-powered website.

Covered in this video:

• Familiarizing yourself with the WordPress Dashboard.
• How to customize the WordPress interface just for you.
• Hide Dashboard modules you rarely use.
• The collapsible navigation menu and functions.
• The default modules that are available to users.
• How to use the QuickPress module to quickly create a new Post.

The second video in this series demonstrates how to create a new article (also called a “Post” in WordPress), using the built-in WYSIWYG editor.

Posts are blog entries–or articles–that are displayed in chronological order on your homepage, typically with the newest post at the top. Unlike pages, posts usually have comments fields beneath them and are also included in your site’s RSS feed.

Covered in this video:

• Understanding the difference between posts and pages.
• How to create a new post using the Posts > Add New > sub-panel.
• Personalizing the Add New Post interface.
• Formatting text and content using the WYSIWYG editor.
• Pasting content from Microsoft Word into WordPress.
• Understanding the Visual Editor and HTML (Code View) Editor modes.
• How to save and publish posts to your site.

This video goes deeper into the topic of Posts within WordPress. It points out more of the settings and choices to be made from within the editing screen in the Dashboard.

The Posts > Edit sub-panel enables you to select the post(s) you wish to edit, delete, or view. Multiple posts can be selected for deletion and for editing. The Bulk Edit feature allows you to change the details for a group of posts at the same time. A handy in-line edit tool, called Quick Edit, allows you to update many fields for an individual post.

Covered in this video:

• How to bulk edit or delete multiple posts at the same time.
• Using the Quick Edit tool to quickly change post details.
• How to make a post “sticky” to keep it at the top of your page.
• Editing, previewing and updating a post using the WYSIWYG editor.

This video shows you how to control Categories and Tags within WordPress. These are organizational tools that make it easier for your readers to find the content they are looking for, no matter where they enter your website. They are for organizing your information and providing navigation for your website users.

Tags are essentially keywords that you assign to each post. They are typically displayed underneath each post. Someone viewing your blog can click on one of those tag links, and an archive page with all the posts containing that tag will be displayed.

Every post in WordPress is filed under one or more Categories. Categories allow your posts to be classifieds into groups and subgroups. If a visitor to your site clicks on a category link, an archive page with all the posts belonging to that category will be displayed. Unlike tags, categories may be assigned to a parent category, enabling you to set up a hierarchy within the category structure.

Covered in this video:

• Understanding the difference between tags and categories.
• How to add and edit categories using the Posts > Categories sub-panel.
• Using category parents to sort content hierarchically.
• How to add and edit tags using the Posts > Tags sub-panel.

Pages are different from Posts in WordPress. This video explains all about Pages and how they are used for more static, unchanging content on your website; they are for information like your About page, or the Contact page of your website.

A Page is another tool to add content to a WordPress site and is often used to present “static” content–content that doesn’t change very often. A good example of a page is the information typically contained in “About Us” or “Contact Us” pages. Pages should not be confused with posts. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology, and as such, are not displayed with the rest of your posts, but are displayed individually.

Covered in this video:

• Reviewing the difference between Pages and Posts.
• How to edit and delete pages using the Pages > Edit sub-panel.
• How to bulk edit or delete multiple pages at the same time.
• Using the Quick Edit tool to quickly change page details.
• How to change the order in which your pages are listed.
• How to file, or “nest” pages underneath a parent page.
• Assigning different page templates for a given page.
• Using the WYSIWYG editor to add and edit pages.

This video shows how to upload and insert images into a Post or a Page on your website. Imagery is held within the Media Library, and uploaded images can be re-posted later, or referred to in the future. You can also upload directly into the Media Library, a technique covered in another video.

Covered in this video:

• How to upload and insert an image or photo from your computer.
• Formatting images using the Image Editor, and CSS.
• Editing images that have been previously embedded.

Embedding a video on a Post or Page of your website is very easy. It’s different from uploading an image, however, in that the media is not located at your own server, on your website, but actually “served” from another place on the internet, like YouTube’s servers or another video hosting service.

The easiest way to embed video on your own site is to first upload your video to a video hosting service, such as YouTube or Vimeo.com. Once your video has been uploaded and converted successfully, it can be embedded within a post or page on your site with just a couple of clicks!

Covered in this video:

• Best practices for inserting video into your site.
• Using Auto-Embed to easily embed videos and other content with just a couple of clicks.
• Embedding other types of content, besides video.

This video shows how the media library is used to organize images and other media, upload new media, and tag or attach media to posts or pages, through the Media Library interface, available in the WordPress dashboard.

In this video, we’ll examine how to use the Media Library to manage uploaded files, and upload other file types (such as PDFs or Word documents) for use in future posts or pages.

The Media Library sub-panel allows you edit, delete or view media previously uploaded to your blog. Multiple media objects can be bulk-edited or deleted, and you can search or filter results to find the desired media file.

You can also use the built-in Image Editor to crop, rotate, or flip images you’ve previously uploaded.

Covered in this video:

• How to upload new files using the Media > Library sub-panel.
• How to bulk-edit or delete media files.
• How to crop, rotate, or flip images using the built-in Image Editor.