Sam's Blog: A major change to Facebook profiles is coming, preview & customize before it goes live!

A major change to Facebook profiles is coming, preview & customize before it goes live!:

Facebook has announced that they will roll out a dramatic redesign of profiles called the Facebook Timeline. The new layout will be completely different than the current profile layout, the main difference being that it will show a history of your Facebook activities, rather than your most recent ones. Consider it more of an autobiography than news. Many users will no doubt revolt over such a drastic change in the site^[1] but if you want to prepare for what's coming, you can enable timeline view and customize your Timeline before your profile gets converted.

Edit Steps

Enable the Facebook Timeline. You'll need to access it through Facebook's developer tool.
Browse your Timeline. Two changes that will stand out to you will be the ability to view your Facebook activity historically, and the availability of a map that will show your posts by place. This is a good time to decide whether this is information that you want friends (or friends of friends, or the public) to be able to review.
- Click on the dates on the right hand bar of your profile to move to a different year. You will be able to see pictures posted during that year, friends you made, as well as wall posts and other stories.
- Click on the Map to view your posts by place.
- Click on a cluster of events to zoom in more, or use the "+" or "-" buttons on the top left of the map.
- Hover over a pin in order to view the story that took place at that location.
- Click on the tabs at the bottom in order to view the stories by category.
Decide how much you want people to be able to see. After you've reviewed your Timeline profile, you might want to limit all your privacy settings to your friends only, or to a group of your friends. Go to your privacy settings and fine-tune the privacy settings for each aspect of your profile. The remainder of this article will focus on fine-tuning your Timeline so you can make sure people see what you want them to see.

Edit Your Life Events

Look for events in your timeline. One of the major changes of the new Facebook Timeline is that it makes important events in your life look more, well, important. Events such as Work and Education milestones, Relationship Statuses and Health and Wellness events show up as bigger stories that span the entire page, rather than one column.
Edit an existing event by clicking on the "Edit or Remove" icon.
Edit the information listed, and Select or Upload a Photo.
Click Save when you are finished.
Add events to your timeline. If there are any milestone events that Facebook did not put on your timeline automatically, you can add stories to any point on your timeline. To do this, hover over the line in the middle until you see a "+" button.
Click the button, and select the type of story you want to add.
Edit the information in the box.
Click Save, and admire your new milestone event!

Edit Your Existing Stories

Find the story with privacy settings you would like to change and hover over it in order to see the Edit buttons. Hovering over the pencil icon will give you the option of hiding the story in your timeline, or deleting it altogether.
Click on the icon of the star in order to "feature" the story on your timeline. Featuring the story will make it span across the page and become one of your Life Events.
Click on the icon next to the date of the story in order to view your privacy settings. Choose a group to share it with.
If you would like even more control over who can see this story, choose the "Custom" button and edit your privacy for that post.

Changing Your Cover Photo

To do this the first time, click "Add a Cover."
Select where you would like to upload your Cover from. You can either choose one of your own photos, or upload a new one from your computer.
Choose a picture from the menu that pops up, or click View Albums to find a picture more easily through your albums. Click on the picture you have selected.
Click and drag on the picture so that it looks good. Unfortunately, you cannot resize the image or cut it down to show exactly what you want, however, you can still move it around so that it shows the best parts of the picture.
Once you have repositioned your Cover, click Save Changes. Before clicking Save Changes, click on the circled icon below in order to control who can see your Cover image.