With the whirlwind of stories this week surrounding Facebook Usernames, I figured I would add my 2 cents to the discussions taking place. Of course, I will still login tonight at 11pm Central to reserve my username, if it’s still available. If anything so that I have it. However, after reading @anildash’s post chronicling the the future of Facebook Usernames, I thought I would offer some insight.

First, I’m not a web programmer. I just shared this with a few folks and some thought it was helpful. If not, no need to retweet this. Note Retweet button up to your right if you would like to share though.

8 Steps to Create Your Own Facebook Username on Your Own Domain

• Login in to your favorite FTP client where you would normally upload files to the root directory of your domain. I use FileZilla which is free.
• Create a new directory in the root directory named “facebook”.
• Open Notepad on your desktop
• Paste the following code into notepad:

<?php
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=2251800&ref=profile“);
exit();
?>

• Change the highlighted url to the long facebook URL from your own profile.
  * Note you could also do the same for your Facebook Fan Page here.
• Save the file as index.php.
• Upload saved index.php file to the “facebook” directory via filezilla of your root directory.
• Test it out: www.mikemerrill.com/facebook

Again, this worked in WordPress. Sure there are 8 different ways to do this.

Hopefully you found this helpful. I also figure using your own domain would help with Google juice as well, but I’m also not an SEO god either. Just a man sharing his thoughts on a Friday afternoon.