Claim an Existing Page

In the “Getting Started” section, we talked briefly about searching for your school and finding that a page or pages had already been created. Here, we will talk about what to do! In our example, Treasure Coast High School had three “hits” that came up in the search. We will go through each one and discuss the differences, and suggest what to do in each case.

The first is the one below. This is a “Community page” and you can’t claim it or dispute it, because community pages are by nature, not official pages for an entity. They are like “fan” pages, created for a community of people that are involved with that entity. This one we can ignore. If you have one that has objectionable content on it or (as in the case below) really out of date information (or next to nothing on it), you can try to contact the page owner and have them remove it, but they are not obligated to. If the content is objectionable to the point that it violates Facebook policies, you can report the page to Facebook for removal (see “Reporting a Page” in the menu). In our case below, we will just ignore this page.

The page below is auto generated by Facebook. The way that this is determined is the circled notice. These pages get created by Facebook several ways, and they can be merged into your official page once it’s created. To merge it, just click “Edit” and then “Add an official page”. Your official page needs to exist before you can do this.

Now on to our final page, and this one we can claim (finally!). Not only can we claim it, but we SHOULD claim it, because it exists in the official Facebook “space” for our school. The way to tell is that it has the full name of the school, and the category is “Public School”. There cannot exist more than one in this category for the same school, so it’s important to have ownership of this main one. If someone has already claimed it and is operating it, please contact ITS (contact webmaster@stlucieschools.org) to discuss the options available, because at that point the best course of action really depends on a lot of factors. Nobody is in trouble if they’ve done this! In fact, we’ve had several individuals who have.

We definitely want to claim this page, and it looks like nobody is actually managing it! We can tell because there are only reviews and “posts about…” and no posts actually made by the page (see below). The first step is to make sure there is a website listed for the school. If there is not, you can add one. Just click the “Suggest Edits” button, and add it, and be sure to save it afterward. Scroll down to find out how to claim this page.

Claim the page by clicking the ellipsis in the menu, and then clicking “This is my business”. You will then get a screen asking if you want to merge the page into an existing page that you already have or claim it as your page. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: IF YOU HAVE ALREADY CREATED A PAGE PRIOR TO CLAIMING ANOTHER PAGE, PLEASE CONTACT ITS (contact webmaster@stlucieschools.org). You’re not going to be in trouble. You didn’t do anything bad. But there is a lot to consider when merging pages, and it’s best to discuss these options by comparing the two proposed pages. Merging combines likes and followers but NOT ratings or content. It also affects the URL (you have to pick one!), and your page URL (the name) can only be changed ONCE, EVER. So it’s very important to not take these decisions lightly otherwise you could lose an existing following or existing content.

If this does not apply to you, please click the “Claim…..” link and proceed.

The next screen will ask you to validate your ownership claim. This can be done several ways. If you have access to the phone number that comes up, then you can use that option. If you click to continue, Facebook will IMMEDIATELY call that phone number and give you a code, so be sure you are at the phone before clicking the button. You may add an extension if you need to. Once you put in this code and click the final button, you’re done! There may be a waiting period while Facebook approves the request, but you will be notified by email when that approval is complete.

If you do not have access to the phone/extension or it is not the correct number for your school, you will need to use an alternate method for verification. Please contact ITS (contact webmaster@stlucieschools.org) in this case, because unless you’ve used your username@stlucie.k12.fl.us email to setup Facebook, you will not be able to validate using this method.

You may ask, why do we want this page so badly…..224 likes and 4 and 5 star ratings…that’s why! We want those..and we’d lose them if we created a completely new page.