Still getting emails about this one, so here’s a quick rundown on how to do it.

First, if you were already using a Fan Page, then you are not affected at all and don’t have to do anything. Please stop emailing me and asking for confirmation. Thanks. 🙂

Now, if you were using your Application’s Wall as your Page (like I was doing and even recommended), then Facebook is killing off the “Wall” of your Application. This is not a big deal, actually, and you can migrate your Fans to a new Page rather easily.

Step One: Create a new Page. Visit this page to do so. Note: You MUST select “Brand or Product”, and in the dropdown you MUST select “App”. This is not optional. You have to do this to migrate your Fans.

Also note that you must make the name of the Page EXACTLY THE SAME as the name of the application. This is important, don’t try to rename your stuff yet.

Step Two: After you’ve created the page, you’ll want to connect it to your site (using SFC, naturally). First, get the ID number of your new Page. You can find this in the URL of the “Edit Page” link on that Facebook Page. Once you have the ID number, put it into the “Facebook Fan Page” field on the SFC Settings screen and save. While you’re on this Edit Page link on Facebook, you can upload your logos, configure it, etc. Note: Do NOT select a new Vanity URL. The migration will migrate your old one if you had one.

Step Three: Configure SFC. If you’re using the Publisher, for example, you may have to click the grant permissions button again to have it get the new access token for the page. You may need to turn on auto-publishing to the page. Stuff like that. For the most part, SFC is pretty good at configuring itself for this, the Fan Box will automagically switch over, etc.

Step Four: Test. Make a new Post and see if it publishes to your Page. Try the Manual Publisher boxes. Verify that it’s working, basically. While you’re at it, you might go and manually publish some of your older posts to the Page, since the migration will not migrate the content on the wall.

Step Five: Migrate. Visit your application’s profile page. If you don’t see the box below, wait a day or two and it will eventually appear:

Use that migrate link and you’ll get a popup box allowing you to select a Page.

WARNING: If you get a popup that says “You don’t have any eligible Facebook Pages to migrate to”, then STOP RIGHT NOW. Do NOT click migrate. You only get one chance at this, if you mess it up then it’s broken forever.

If you have a Page, and it’s a “Brands or Products/App” page, and it has the EXACT same name as your Application, then you will be given a dropdown to select that Page. Otherwise, you’ll get the bad message. Click Cancel in such a case, fix your Page, and then try again. Only when you have the dropdown and have selected your page should you continue.

Step Six: Patience. Once you’ve selected your new Page and clicked Migrate (and remember, you only get one shot at this!), then after a while, a few things will happen:

a) Your Fans of the Application will slowly be migrated to be Fans of the new Page instead.

b) If you had a vanity URL on the Application Page and did not have one on the Fan Page, then the vanity URL will get migrated too.

c) Your Application Wall will disappear forever (this happens instantly) and any links to it will redirect to your Fan Page.

And that’s it. You’re done. Works fine with SFC. The next version of SFC will remove the publishing to Application Pages entirely, as well as the (now misleading) wording.

 

Shortlink:

5 Comments

  1. Thanks for the post and the awesome plugin =) By the way, may the updating to WP 3.3 affect either the SFC or Simple Twitter Connect plugins?

    Cheers

  2. Hi Otto, thanks for this really useful guide, and a great plugin. I transitioned from a FB application to a fan page a while back following this guide. I’m now investigating whether/ how I can add old WP posts onto the page’s timeline.

    Is it possible to post to FB from WP using SFC, and edit the published date on FB? I realize this is probably FB functionality, rather than SFC, but wondered if this is something you’ve encountered? After a lot of searching, I’ve not found much in the way of useful info.

    Thanks, keep up the great work!

  3. awww so sad 🙁 can u guys let me know whenever FB decides for 2nd chances pls of migrating likes pls?:( https://www.facebook.com/meowchie18

  4. Hi Otto,

    I’m getting two strange messages here with SFC:

    on the post screen:
    If you can see this, then there is some form of problem showing you the Facebook publishing buttons. This may be caused by a plugin conflict or some form of bad javascript on this page. Try reloading or disabling other plugins to find the source of the problem.

    and on settings SFC screen:

    No User or Access Token found. Try re-saving this page.
    Application Access Token not found. Try re-saving this page.
    Fan Page Access Token not found. Try re-saving this page.

    What I’need to fix this?

    Best regards

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