Ok so there is a bunch of people out there asking questions on how to make fan pages like all those guru ones with the “Add me here” buttons etc. And also how to make hidden sections, its all quite easy but it isn’t really written out in black and white. Some people were going to start charging for this stuff, but its ridiculous. Its so easy!
Do note however, that you do need to know some good HTML skills. And a good knowledge of how pages are generated. I’m not going to walk you through how to create a clickable link
Step 1.
Create a fan page. NOT a group. The best thing about a fan page, is that you arent seen to be the creator. A fan page is anonymous. And on top of that it has a few extra features.
Step 2.
Go to the Static FBML fan page :
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878&ref=search&sid=100000762395305.2195135..1
On the left hand side, underneath the display picture there is a link for “Add To Me Page”. Obviously click it. A box will then popup and you will have to select your fan page from the list. If you have many fanpages, then you can add it to any of them etc.
The reason we use Static FBML tabs on our page, is because it allows Facebook Markup language, allows for custom tab titles, AND allows alot more HTML to be put onto your page.
Step 3.
Download Firebug for Firefox, OR use Google Chrome. Im going to use Firebug/Firefox for this demonstration so if your using Chrome, you can just follow along. Do note that Firebug is incredibly useful so don’t be worried about having useless crap on your Firefox.
Step 4.
Create your page!
So your probably thinking, WTF. I just downloaded Firebug, what the hell for! Ok well you know how alot of groups have awesome “Click here to become a fan” buttons. And you can never work out how they make the link clickable? Well heres how.
Go back to your page, and click the “Edit Page” button on left hand side.
There should be a list of your modules, one of them will be “FBML”, click edit on this one.
Change the title to be whatever you want. If your doing one of the typical win a free ipod! Then call it “Heres how you win” etc. The space below that is for ANY HTML markup. This also means that remember to put <br /> in your code for line breaks.
Step 5.
In a new tab open up your facebook fan page. Right click the “Become A Fan” button, and select “Inspect Element”.

Note, This will only work with Firebug for Firefox.
A box should come along the bottom of your screen containing the HTML markup. For this particular element, the link is just above the span tag, so :

Copy out that whole <a> tag. From there you can paste it into your FBML tab, and add an image button (You will need to cut the image yourself). Your link will now be clickable, and when people click on it, they will join the group.
You can do this with things like inviting friends aswell. Just inspect the element of that link/button. And grab the <a> tag off it.
Step 6.
Alot of people nowadays are doing hidden sections. Im not really going to go into detail about how to do it. Ill just give you the code, you can work it out
<fb:fbml version=”1.1″>
<fb:visible-to-connection>
Hidden content in here!
</fb:visible-to-connection>
</fb:fbml>
Often what people do. If they have a button with “Be A Fan”. And then to win the ipod or whatever, they say “Become a fan and step 2 will be revealed”. And this works because if step 1 is becoming a fan, once they are a fan the hidden section will be revealed etc. Whatever, its all pretty shady but do what you will with it.
Step 7.
You will also want to change your landing page to your static page so that straight away they get hit with the business. Also if you use Static FBML, when you view this page you cant see how many fans there are already for that page. Meaning that you can pretend your a huge group and they wont know until they go to the wall tab.
On your main Fan page tab, or more known as “Your Wall”. There is a link called “Settings”. Click this.
In that small menu there will be a setting called “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else:”. Change this to your landing page tab. So that any new visitor will go directly to it.
Step 8.
Also just as an extra little tidbit. There is a javascript snippet that can be used to invite all your friends at once to the page, without having to invite them individually. So basically click the “Suggest To Friends” link on the left hand side of the fan page. And a small window will come up with all your friends. Copy and paste the following code into your ADDRESS BAR up the top.
javascript:elms=document.getElementById(‘friends’).getElementsByTagName(‘li’);for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === ‘object’){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}
Its just a simple javascript snippet, that selects all your friends at once. You can give this to your fans aswell to have them invite all their friends at once.
Conclusion
There is probably a massive amount that i missed. But the thing is to learn it, you really have to get out there and do it. Look at other viral pages and see how they work. Often a viral page isnt just down to luck, its about how they market it, and how they brand all their pages.