It is not intentional but sometimes bad things happen. Either by accident or other strange reasons we lock ourselves out of our facebook Timeline. Never bothered? Not until it really happens to you.

Since Facebook has already become a big part of our social lives, you should not neglect this possibility that one day you cannot log on to your favorite social networking site. Panic is not going to get you anywhere, so be ready to prevent this from happening with these 5 useful tips:

• 1. Add a secondary email address to your account

The easiest way you can secure your facebook account is by adding another email address. Doing so, you can have a backup contact if you request assistance from facebook if you had been locked out. To add a secondary email address, go to facebook settings > Email > Edit:

Note: You can add multiple email addresses to your account, not just for security reasons but your friends can find you easily on Facebook.

• 2. Add your mobile number to your account

With your mobile number included Facebook can send you a code to reset your password upon requested. To add a mobile number go to your Account Settings > Mobile. Adding the mobile number does not mean you activated the text messaging service, that has to be done through your service carrier.

• 3. Include a security question to your account

Not many people know how important this is, but it would be a life saver when you are locked out of you own email accounts, worst case scenario. To add a security question, go to Account Settings > Security > Security Question (if you have already set a security question this option will no longer visible to you). You can check your security question here but you will not be able to change it.

• 4. Make sure the email address(es) you add are only accessible by you

This is more like an advice rather than a method. This is to remind you if anyone can access one of the email addresses you listed on your account, that person can request a new password for your facebook account and change everything! Trust me, you don’t want that so keep your email addresses safe at all times.

• 5. Always use REAL information on your account

Real information like real name and birth date is required for Facebook to track your profile/timeline if you lost access to your account. Beware if you are using nickname or fake names on your Timeline, better change it now because facebook limits the number of how many times you can change your name.

Do you have other tips to add in? Tell us in your comment.

• Track page performance
• Identify content that resonates with your audience
• Optimize your status updates to encourage fans to tell friends about you

To access your Page Insights is simple, just click at the Insights tab on the left-hand side of your Page and access ‘Likes’, ‘Reach’ and ‘Talking About This’, all these insights metrics are in Pacific Standard Time (PST).

4 Metrics to Measure Your Page Performance

Get to know your new insights Metrics:

1. Total Likes – equal to ‘Fans’ who click the ‘Like’ button above your Page.

2. Friend of Fans – Number of unique people who are friends with your fans (including the fans themselves)

3. People Talking About This – Number of people who created a story from your page posts, including those who:

• Like your page
• Comment, like and share your page updates
• Answer your question
• Respond to your page event
• Mention and tag your page (including photo tagging)
• Check-in
• Recommend your Place page

4. Total Reach – Number of people who have seen content associated with your page (including Ads or sponsored stories about your Page), in another word, have seen your page post in the last 7 days. Total people reached per post can be found below your wall posts. This new number is usually lower than the ‘Impressions’ count because one person can see multiple impressions (=how many times a post is displayed whether it is been clicked or not).

More New Metrics: Engaged Users and Virality

When viewing your new Page Insights, you will see data about ‘Engaged Users’ and ‘Virality’. Engaged Users are people who clicked anywhere on your post. Virality on the other hand is associated with the two numbers listed below each of your wall posts – people reached and people talking about this. You can get the percentage of your post virality by dividing number of people ‘talking about this’ with people ‘reached’. Simply put, how many people saw your post from a story published by a friend.

New Page Insights still provides demographic data about fans that covers gender, age, countries, cities and language. You can discover how your fans found you and like your page from the ‘Like Sources’: Insights > Likes

To learn more about the new Insights join the interactive course by Facebook. Do you find the New Page Insights more helpful than the Old Insights? Tell us in your comment.

How to Block People from Posting on Your Timeline?

Normally we won’t go there. We love friends posting stories on our wall but for some, if you want to block this function then this is what you can do:

From the drop down next to your Home page > Privacy Settings > How You Connect > Edit Settings> Who can post on your timeline. But this will not prevent them from commenting on posts on your timeline. Thus, to control who can view posts from your friends on your Timeline, you need to edit settings for ‘Who can see posts by others on your profile (timeline)’.

How to Control Tagging on Your Timeline?

Facebook is well aware that not everyone likes to be tagged on silly stories or photos so Timeline (Profile) Review is created so users can approve or reject tagged posts before they go live on your Timeline. You won’t be able to control what others are posting on their Timeline but at least you get to choose what displays on yours. Better make use of this privacy setting:

From the drop down next to your Home page > Privacy Settings > How Tags Work > Edit Settings > Timeline Review> On:

How to check your pending posts from timeline?

After you turned on Timeline Review, whenever someone tags you, you can view your pending posts from activity log. The posts will appear above the page, just tick to approve and cross to ignore. It is that simple.

Are you comfortable to have your tagged photos appear on Timeline? What is your biggest concern over posting and tagging on Timeline? Let us know.

Hiding a story from Timeline will prevent people from reading your story publicly but it will still appear in your ‘Activity Log’ and whoever is allowed to see that story in their news feed, for example tagged posts or photos of your friends. To completely remove the story from the timeline, you can use the ‘Delete Post’ in the pull down selection.

And let’s not forgetting the audience selector which you can use to prevent some friends from seeing some of your private stories:

How to Limit the Audience for Past Posts

Timeline is said to tell stories about someone since the day the person joined Facebook (or born) till date, it is completely understandable if users are worried about how past posts will appear to public on their Timeline. If only we could go back and adjust everything! Fear not, Facebook made it easy with one click: Privacy Settings > Limit the Audience for Past Posts > Manage Past Post Visibility > Limit Old Posts:

So that’s how you can hide stories from your Timeline. If you have any suggestions or want to report a bug on your Timeline, you may use the contact form:

What do you think about the Timeline? Are you happy with it or want your old profile back? Tell us.

But first, you should know people can view your timeline by scrolling through the dates on the right-hand side of your timeline and jumping from one year to another (or month):

Nevertheless you get to decide which stories stay on your Timeline by adjusting its visibility and audience selector settings. Let’s see how to go about with this:

How Can You Share Stories on Your Timeline?

This box is no stranger to us, eh? Same as how you normally share your status in your profile, you can add photos, tag your friends and add a location to your story. Something new here are sharing ‘Life Event’ and adding date to your story. One thing you should aware is that ‘life events’ is set to ‘public’ by default so adjust your audience selector before hitting that ‘Post’ button.  An example of how ‘Life events’ work is jotting down the date when you decided to become a vegetarian and adding other information like how, who you were with, where , when and upload photos too:

You can change the date of your stories anytime, even from the tagged photos and videos of you by friends. Same thing goes if you tagged your friends; they will be able to change the date of the tagged stories too.

What if you missed adding a story and now you are way ahead from it? You can go back by scrolling through the center of your timeline and squeeze it in:  pick a spot and click ‘+’ to post a story:

Sometimes while you are adding more stories to your timeline, some of them will fade behind the grey dots down the center of the timeline. You can bring up the story you want from there by hover over the dots, click ‘Feature’ to move the story out. Or you can too, feature the story while in the ‘Activity Log’:

All your featured stories will expand to widescreen and will ALWAYS appear on your timeline while others will fade over time.

Next post we will be discussing on how you can hide your story on Timeline, don’t miss it.

Are you enlightened? Now changing a name supposed to be a piece of cake on Facebook in your Account Settings > Name

Just one note about the ‘alternate name’, it will also show up in the search results and to those who you sent friend requests to, next to your name of course.

Up till this point things are easy, but you should know there is a limit on the number of times you can change your name. As of how many times as the ‘limit’, we don’t know. But it’s plain to see that Facebook is encouraging REAL name to be used on profiles/Timelines. One more thing, if your account had been previously revised by Facebook representative and name-changing is one of things they finalized on, you will no longer been given the option to manually change your name again.

Well, let’s say if you think the rejection to change your name is a mistake and your name is not violating any of their naming policies, there is a way you can request for help using this contact form:

I hope you don’t have to go through all the trouble just to get a REAL name for your Timeline. Good luck!

Or click the ‘About’ below your profile picture:

Some personal information you can edit in Timeline including:

• Basic Info, Contact Info
• Work and Education
• Living (Your Hometown)
• Your Relationships
• Pages you owned
• Favorite Quotations

Each of your information can be modified with the ‘Edit’ link at the top-right corner. Don’t forget to choose your audience selector (public, friends, only me or custom) before saving your changes. Same goes to other boxes underneath your cover: Friends, Photos, Map, Likes, About, Subscribers, Subscriptions and Notes. Click at any of the boxes you like to edit and go through the process like you normally do with your old profiles.

Another way to edit is by using the pull down menu in your ‘Activity Log’ and navigates from one box to another:

That’s just about it on how to edit your personal information on Timeline. Have you had any difficulties trying to change your info?

A cover is the large photo at the top of your timeline. Similar to your profile picture, your cover photo is public so you should choose it wisely. Select the unique photo from your life that best describes who you are and what you care about. Do not use it for banner ads or any content that is commercial, copyright-infringing or promotional.

The size of your cover photo must be at least 720 pixels wide. The recommended cover size limit is about 851×315 px. Here is how you can add a cover image to your profile timeline,

1. On your new profile Timeline, click ‘Add a Cover’.
2. Make your pick between ‘Upload photo’ (from desktop) and ‘Choose from Photos’ (from existing photo albums).
3. You can reposition your cover image by dragging it to fit, then ‘Save’ when done.

Your cover image is stored in a ‘Cover Photos’ album and you can edit this photo anytime same as any of your other photos.

Unlike any other albums, you cannot adjust the album privacy settings, it will always remain Public. To reach your Cover photos, look for ‘Photos’ box at the top of your timeline > Cover Photos (album).

You can know more about Timeline and which of your friends already got it here. We will cover some basic tips about timeline in next post. Meanwhile, have you uploaded your cover photo yet? Share your link below so we can see it.

The general idea of ‘Subscribe’ is to let Facebook users follow up on things from people they care about, and this ranging from not just personal friends but including public figures such as celebrities or journalists. This is a good method to hear from people who you do not know personally without forcing them to accept your friend request.

There are a few things you should know about your ‘Subscribe’ button:

-          You have to opt in to use it (if you have not, you will see the Subscribe button on your friends’ profiles anyway, meaning you are auto-receiving their updates in News Feed, the way it supposed to happen before the ‘Subscribe’ button ever been introduced)

-          Only posts you marked as ‘Public’ will be seen by your subscribers

-          You can control how people respond to your public updates through Subscribers > Edit Settings (comments, notification on new subscribers, so forth)

Think of it as an extra advantage to broadcast to a huge audience, without worrying about privacy intrusion. If you do not think it is useful, turn it off anytime.

How to Activate your Subscribe button?

On the left-side of your profile, click Subscriptions> Allow Subscribers. Settings will appear for you to edit who can comment on your public posts or be notified about new subscribers. Or easier, go to this link to activate your subscription.  To find out who had subscribed to your public updates, click at ‘Subscribers’ on the profile tab (your friends won’t be listed, they are already subscribers by default).

You can control comment activity on your public updates and setup notifications whenever you have new subscribers:

What happens if you subscribe to someone?

We are subscribed to friends’ public updates by default. Whether friends or public figures, When you are subscribed to someone, you can fine-tune what you choose to see from their updates:  All, most updates or only important. The status format including Life events, status updates, photos, games, comments and likes, other activities.

How to Unsubscribe from someone?

You can choose to unsubscribe to that person anytime you feel overwhelmed:

-          On that profile, look for ‘Subscribed > Unsubscribe’ and click it

-          Turn it off in your news feed by the report link > Unsubscribe

Can I stop someone from subscribing  to me?

The only solution is to block the person.

What is the limit of my subscription?

You can subscribe up to 5000 people (including your friend count). As for subscribers, unlimited!

What is the Future of Subscription?

According to Facebook, they are planning of allowing Page fans to be converted into Subscribers. After the migration, the Page will be deleted. So, it is clear that this is not for everyone. If you are representing your business or brand on Facebook, do keep your Page.

To contact Facebook about your feedback on the Subscribe or report a bug, try this form.

Obviously, this is an official guide to Facebook security for all Facebook users where you are being guided to:

• Protect your Facebook account
• Avoid the scammers
• Use advanced security settings
• Recover a hacked Facebook account
• Stop imposters

Below are the top 16 tips for staying secure on Facebook shared by Facebook Security team:

• Only Friend people you know.

• Create a good password and use it only for Facebook.

• Don’t share your password.

• Change your password on a regular basis.

• Share your personal information only with people and companies that need it.

• Log into Facebook only ONCE each session. If it looks like Facebook is asking you to log in a second time, skip the links and directly type www.facebook.com into your browser address bar.

• Use a one-time password when using someone else’s computer.

• Log out of Facebook after using someone else’s computer.

• Use secure browsing whenever possible.

• Only download Apps from sites you trust.

• Keep your anti-virus software updated.

• Keep your browser and other applications up to date.

• Don’t paste script (code) in your browser address bar.

• Use browser add-ons like Web of Trust and Firefox’s NoScript to keep your account from being hijacked.

• Beware of “goofy” posts from anyone—even Friends. If it looks like something your Friend wouldn’t post, don’t click on it.

• Scammers might hack your Friends’ accounts and send links from their accounts. Beware of enticing links coming from your Friends.

Download Free Facebook Security Guidebook

You can download a copy of Guide to Facebook Security ebook from Facebook Security Page or click here.