Facebook Timeline and Complete Tutorial

Facebook Timeline is the new profile look that Facebook has unleashed upon its users. If you don’t have it yet and Facebook didn’t already impose it on you, here’s a small guide on how to activate it: How to get Facebook Timeline.

Most of us have the Timeline and hate it.. of course.
Unfortunately the only final method to remove the Timeline is to put your Facebook account out of his misery (see Delete or Remove the Facebook Timeline )
If you’re still determined to stay using Facebook, you need to be told a way to properly manage the new Facebook Timeline as a result of otherwise it's going to become a stalker’s paradise! Or it will be just an endless source of humor: you being mocked by all of your Facebook friends for a few stupid picture or post you had six months ago…

Bottom line: you have got to understand a way to use the new Facebook Timeline and you have got to make certain to not share the incorrect information with the incorrect people!

So enough chit-chat, here we tend to go:

Facebook Timeline Cover Photo

The first thing to deal with once you get the Timeline is the Cover Photo, that will sit from now on on top of our timeline. The Facebook Timeline Cover Photo is the first thing people will see when they get on your profile. You can use an existent photo from one of your albums or upload a picture especially for this. With little skill and a bit of creativity you may welcome your new stalkers, ah I mean visitors, in style ;)
Here’s what few others did:

In case you want to do play with your new cover, here is all the data you need to know:

Facebook Timeline Navigation

Right under your Cover Photo you may now find few boxes with your friends, photos, all of your likes, all the applications you’ve installed and other crap. And on the right you may now see the actual “Timeline Navigation”:

Click on it or scroll down to see most if not all of your posts, picture and events from the moment you joined Facebook.. here’s where the fun begins.
You can choose to see all of the events posted or just the highlights, the most important ones:

It can be useful when you don’t want to see everything or in the contrary you want to see all the post on it.
You can of course still add new posts, from Status updates to Images and Life Events:

And you may add these new posts on top of the Timeline or at any date you choose too. It’s a bit like going back in time. All you have to do is go to that exact point in time and if you hover on the blue timeline bar in the middle, you will see a small “+”. Click it and you’ll be on your way :

A very important feature in viewing your new Facebook Timeline is the “View As” button:

This will show you how your timeline would look to the rest of your world. You can even choose a specific friend or family member’s perspective to know exactly what he/she can see on your profile. This is to avoid some of those awkward discussions with your parents after the latest party pictures surfaced ;)

Editing the Timeline

Now once that you have identified the compromising pictures or drunken posts, all you have to do is hide it from the face of the world (well actually just from Facebook, and that only until they will get some privacy bug that might post all of these all over again..)
On the top right of every posts you can find these buttons:

You may:

- “Star” a post – making it bigger, 2 columns wide bigger that means.
- “Change date” – it will move that post to the date you change it too..
- “Hide from Timeline” – his will NOT delete the post, it will just hide it from your timeline. The post will still be visible in your friends feed( or depending on the privacy settings for that post)
- “Delete from Timeline“. This will delete the post, image or event from the timeline.

Facebook Timeline Privacy

Now pay extra atention because the most important things you need to know about the new Facebook Timeline are the privacy elements.
In kinda the same way you edit the posts you can also edit who do you share it with:

This is how you can control how each post can be seen by the rest of the word.
An additional help would be here if you have already divided your friends intro Friend Lists. Facebook gives you the ability to organize your friends into lists. It can be extremely helpful, for example to share a post just with your “neighbors” list only or create a party event and share with everyone except the “idiot friends I never talk to” list.
So now that you got the hang of it, you could go and edit all of these posts, well the hundreds or even thousands you may have depending on how active or very active Facebook user you are.. OR use a little privacy trick to at least change all public posts to “Friends Only” sharing setting.
If you have any old posts that are either public or shared with “friends of friends” you can change the privacy for all of them (if you want, of course) to “Friends Only” with just one single click:

- Click on the arrow button nex to the Home button on the top right of your Facebook page:
- Select Privacy Settings
- Scroll down to “Limit the Audience for Past Posts” and select “Limit Old Posts”:

This is one of the fastest ways to bring back some security to your Facebook life.
Also now that you’re here, you may explore more of your privacy settings, especially the:
“Control Your Default Privacy” section:

Here you may choose how your posts will be shown by default, share it with the world, or just a small set of your friends.
There are few other cool tricks you can do here:

Making your Timeline Posts Private – make it that nobody can post anything on your Timeline, except for yourself of course. You can do that by going again to “Privacy Settings” – “How You Connect”.
Once there, go to “Who can post on your timeline”:

This is a good way to expect no surprises from “dear” and “loving” friends.
Or you may allow them to post but don’t let anyone see it.. well expect you or the people you choose. You do this by going to the same “Privacy Settings” – “How You Connect” and select the last option: “Who can see posts by others on your timeline?”
Use the “How Tags Work” section if you want control over what pictures or posts you will tagged in by other people and also who can view this.
“Apps and Websites” are the place to make sure no pesky application gets more data than they are required, also this is the right place to stop any of those that are spamming or annoying you. Facebook introduced a new concept the “Frictionless Sharing”. This means sharing your non-Facebook web activity with your Facebook friends BUT without your explicit permission:

As you may see I was watching a movie on Dailymotion, and it was automatically posted on the Facebook news ticker. Yeah, creepy as hell! All you have to do is view an article, play a video and not pay to much attention to the privacy settings for this feature, and voilà, everything you do shows up on Facebook.
So if you want to “silence” any application that did this to you, this is the place for it.

Take your sweet time and explore all of these privacy features as it may at least, save you a lot of embarasment.
Better to be safe than.. sorry!

Facebook Activity Log

On the top of your timeline, next to the “View As” button is the “Activity log” button.
This will take you to a new window where you may see all of your activity, every comment you ever made, every photo you tagged, every little crap you “liked”.
But don’t worry, this is a part that only YOU can see, none of your friends or visitors can see this.
It’s a good place to check you did nothing stupid, or nobody else used your Facebook account.

Since I don’t want you dosing off, I’ll leave it to this. If you’re going to follow this small Facebook Timeline guide you should be safe, well actually as safe as Facebook allows it;)