Creating Facebook Tabs the ShortStack Way
One of the oldest tricks in the book when you're on a tight budget and looking to purchase goods or services is to go for one of the least expensive offerings of a high-end provider, rather than one of the most expensive from a business that focuses on the low end. Have lunch in a top restaurant, for example, and order just a single dish, washed down by mineral water. You'll eat well in a memorable environment and pay little more than for a more copious offering in a forgettable establishment. If your focus is on the quality of the experience, not the quantity, this approach can't fail.
The same holds true in the domain of web services. Whatever your needs there's a myriad of providers, ranging from free to ruinously expensive. How to find the gem amongst all the clunkers? I applied the single-dish-at-a-good-restaurant approach a few months ago when searching for a shop that would let me create and deploy apps for the Graphics.com Facebook page. I had been maintaining the page for a few months and decided it was time to liven it up by adding a monthly sweepstakes that offered prizes of graphics software.
The app had only a few requirements. First, it needed to be available only to those who Liked the page, a classic device to convert visitors to fans, as well as bring existing fans back to enter each month. It also needed to be fully integrated with Facebook, for example by allowing participants to share the monthly sweepstakes and invite their friends. I also needed the app to capture the names and email addresses of those entering. As well, the app creation environment needed to be simple enough that I could quickly create a new sweepstakes each month and publish it without any hassle. And if hassles arose, I wanted to be sure that support was available to quickly resolve any technical issues.
While lots of free Facebook app services are out there, and in some cases might provide all that you need, I passed on these and began checking out commercial services, those that offered plans going up to the enterprise level. After some research I opted for ShortStack, which provides plans ranging from free up to (gulp) $300 per month. The free plan is really very robust, since you have access to quite a bit of functionality that you can deploy on any number of pages with up to 2,000 total Likes. However, I went for the first pay-for level, dubbed Silver Dollar, which provides all I need for the princely sum of $15 per month, as long as the Graphics.com page doesn't exceed 25,000 fans (which won't be anytime soon).
So how did I go about creating and publishing the sweepstakes app with ShortStack? The first step was to generate the text and graphic assets, starting with the long document for the official rules. Then I created several images for the different elements that would be displayed to those landing on the sweepstakes tab for the first time, as well as to those who were already fans. Then it was time to glue these together into an app.
After logging in to ShortStack with my Facebook account, I began by creating an entry form by using the visual back end. Easy stuff, even for someone like myself who ranks form creation on the same level as root canals. Then it was time to begin the tab creation process. A range of templates is available, complete with themes, but I preferred to start from scratch. This is made easy thanks to ShortStack's widget-based, drag and drop environment, as shown below (click to enlarge).
To create the tab I simply dragged over a number of image, text and form widgets, then clicked on them to define what image or text was connected to each, and how they should display and behave. You can click between fan, non-fan and admin views of the tab at any time, which I found invaluable.
Once the "stack" was set up to my liking, I saved it and clicked Publish to display it on the Graphics.com Facebook page, shown below.
Now each month I can simply return to this tab in ShortStack, change the graphics, update the text and republish it. Sweet. Also handy is that entries are saved in a database, making it easy for me to randomly pick a winner. And on the few occasions I've been stumped by something, my queries have been quickly and comprehensively answered. I don't know if you can reasonably expect much more than that for 15 bucks a month. In fact, this has worked so smoothly that I'm now planning to deploy the photo gallery app.
While I'm clearly a ShortStack fan, there are many competing services out there. Have you found a great one I've overlooked?
Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com
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