Quick tip: “Facebook – you are not eligible to create a username”
If you have created a Facebook fanpage, you also want it to be found well. Facebook therefore allows you to generate a suitable address for the fanpage. You can choose a short and catchy short URL (Vanity-Url), which can be used on business cards or newspaper advertisements, for example. Facebook calls this vanity URL “username”. Each username exists only once and can be claimed by a person or company.
However, when you try to create a username, you may receive the following message:
You are not eligible to create a username
Cause of error and solution
To create a username for a fanpage you have to be an administrator of the site. But that alone is not enough. Before you can create a username for the supervised fanpage, the following conditions must be fulfilled:
- The fan site must already have at least 25 Likes
- Your personal Facebook account needs to be verified
- For your personal Facebook account, a username must be defined
Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t point out these prerequisites and instead only issues the above-mentioned, meaningless error message. If you have met the first requirement (minimum number of Facebook-Likes), you have to verify your personal Facebook account and define a username. These two conditions can be met quite easily:
Verify your personal Facebook account:
- Open the settings of Facebook (small arrows at the top right of the menu –> Settings)
- Switch then to the menu item Mobile phone
- Enter your mobile phone number there to verify your account
- Behind the added number now click on “Confirm“
- Facebook then sends you a confirmation code via SMS to
- Enter the received confirmation code into the provided field
Set personal username:
- Open the settings of Facebook (small arrows at the top right of the menu –> Settings)
- General account settings –> username
- Choose a username for your personal Facebook account
If you have verified your personal Facebook account and have a username, you can then normally create a username for the fanpage.
Create username
To set a username for your fanpage, you have to click on Info in the left menu of the fanpage. On the following page you will find in the upper part of the menu: Create username for page.
Small problem, big effect 🙂
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Why doesn’t Facebook provide these instructions themselves? Why do they have to make it as difficult as possible to do business with them? What if I choose *not* to use Facebook at all as part of my social media campaign (which is what I’m probably going to do now)? If everyone started doing this, which seems to be the trend, they’d be out of business fast.
I agree Jennifer, Facebook Sucks!
I agree, spent days being annoyed by this and not understanding why. Facebook Business is a joke compared to others like LinkedIn. Thanks so much for the article though, this is a huge help.
Thank you very much,
after your tip, it finally works
this is the best solution
Thank you again!
I’ve been trying this, and I have a problem getting past the “verify’ your mobile number page – I log out and back in and it lands on the verify page.
the number I enter (several ways – with country code, without, spaces between area code and number) does not work and I cannot get past this
please advise thanks you
gneil9 at gmail
I can’t believe it was so simple – I’ve been struggling with this for the past 2 days, going round and round the houses and getting more frustrated. Nowhere seemed to have this really straightforward, simple EASY info – and certainly not Facebook.
They are such a massive business, you’d think they’d have this info somewhere.
BTW I didn’t need the 25 likes, just the mobile verification and personal username steps.