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 fanpage must already have at least 25 Likes
- You must not have created more than one fanpage lately
- Your personal Facebook account needs to be verified
- Your personal profile must not be newly created
- 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.
honestly, there was so many solutions out there that simply did not work. This article is gold, it was a simple as knowing this very useful information, thank you!
Wow! Thank you so much, I was about pulling my hair out wondering why I couldn’t do this. It’s a shame Facebook just doesn’t make this public! I can’t understand why not.
Very helpful finally someone explained why i couldnt get usernames for the longest time now for my fan pages… Thx so much!!!
Does this still apply for today? So I need 25 likes then. Ok. Thanks!
thanks sooooo much facebook is ridiculious for not telling us such simple steps for something so simple
Thanks so much – I was getting so frustrated!! However, after verifying my personal Facebook account and setting a personal username that was sufficient – I luckily didn’t need 25 likes as I have only got 2 so far!
Thank you SO MUCH!!!!! I have searched for months and months and tried all sorts of ‘Help”, none of which worked. Facebook is a rubbish platform, but thank you for providing answers to its bizarre ways.
Could you just move into ruling the world, please?
Thank you so much!!!
This really works!!! I didnt need 25 likes, just step 1 & 2. Thank you so much, I was going crazy!!
Anybody know how long you have to wait, if you’ve created a page recently? I made one by mistake and deleted it… I think that’s the only reason left I’m having trouble doing this.
Thank you for posting this very very helpful indeed. Full credit to you.
How long do you have to wait if you’ve created more than one fan page to be eligible to set username?
What I don’t understand is that I got this error for just one page I created, but I was able to create usernames for other pages without incident. All the criteria for my personal Facebook page was in order, none of the pages had 25 likes, and I created usernames for new pages both before and after the one getting the error message. I don’t understand – with all other things being equal – it’s working for some pages but not others. Has anyone else had this problem?
This post has been insanely helpful. No idea why Facebook does not give a more detailed error message 😛