Facebook Sign in page and homepage screen

As explained in our Facebook Login and Sign in Settings tutorial, what you see when you access a Facebook profile, the homepage, or any other page hosted under facebook.com message inside your favorite social networking website will either show you limited content -in case you are not currently signed in- or show you content based on your profile - when you are actually logged in to the site. In this tutorial, we'll give you a brief overview of the Facebook Sign in page and generic homepage screen.

Overview of the Facebook homepage (including Sign in form)

When you are not signed in to your Facebook account, this is what you'll see when accessing the main Facebook page (homepage) - for example by typing www.facebook.com inside the address bar: (note that the URL (internet address) is exactly the same: Facebook will determine which main page to display depending on whether you are currently signed in or not).

In this case, the Facebook homepage gives you three options:

• Facebook Sign-in form - in the top right corner of the default Facebook homepage, you will see the text fields for your credentials and the "Login" button - this is described in details in our Facebook Sign in tutorial. Existing Facebook users will use this area to enter their email address and password to access their profile and account.
• Facebook Sign-up form - in the middle right portion of the default homepage, you will find the very short "Sign up Form", which allows new users to get a Facebook account and create their own profile. After clicking on the Sign Up button, they will be able to customize their account setup. And below the green button, you will see a link:
• Create a Facebook page for your company (business) or band - Facebook is no longer just a nice hangout place for the online crowd, it has progressively become an important networking and marketing tools. The "Create a Page" link allows businesses to establish an online presence through Facebook - as easily as private individuals can have a personal profile.

This is it, as far as main functionality goes for the default Facebook homepage (main page), which you will see whenever you are not signed in to your account. Let's now look at the "Signed-In" homepage:

Overview of the Facebook main page for signed-in users

Once you have gone through a successful Facebook login session, the content you see on your main page will be tailored just for you (since Facebook now knows who you are!) The "signed-in" main page / Facebook homepage is "action-oriented", and lets you right away start customizing your profile:

You will become quite familiar with both homepages, since you will need to log back in to your account periodically (either because you manually logged out, are checking your profile from another computer, or because the "login cookie" has expired on your computer). Either way, the signed-in main page is the one you'll see most of the time, especially if you select "Keep me logged in" when you sign in to your account.

Tip: note that Facebook constantly updates its functionality, and more seldom, the appearance of its screens as well (including homepage), which just recently went through a substantial redesign. The latest version of Facebook always manages to retain a familiar feel to existing users. The underlying "inner workings" tend to remain untouched - more on the generics at our free Facebook tutorials.