NowTowns is all about discovering new things in your community. You already know all the big chains like McDonald's and WalMart, so our goal is to help you discover local businesses that you may not have otherwise heard of. Most of the businesses you will find on NowTowns are locally owned and operated, and have the kind of personality that you just won't find from large corporations.

NowTowns is also local to all communities it supports, so you will always find much more detailed information than any of the other "local" sites that base themselves in California and simply give you addresses and phone numbers for businesses. At NowTowns, you will find gorgeous pictures of every business inside and out, giving you a great feel for the atmosphere. Most restaurants also have their full menus online, along with prices and pictures of most of the items on their menu. You won't find that anywhere else!

Of course, businesses are just one part of NowTowns. You will also find events, classifieds, bands, movie show times, music, and more, and all of it is based in your local community!

NowTowns would of course love to offer our detailed content for every business in the community, but this is not possible for a variety of reasons. Only businesses that want to be listed and allow us to take pictures of their establishment and their products and services are on NowTowns. However, just because a business isn't listed, doesn't mean they're not going to be on the web site at some point - we may just not have talked to them yet. There are over 6,000 business alone in the Corvallis area, so it understandably takes a while to talk to all of them!

You can certainly help us out as well. If there's a business you want that's not listed, next time you're in that business, talk to the owner or a manager and tell them that you wish their company was on NowTowns.com.

We'd love to hear from you. Our contact information is available here. The preferred method of contact is to simply fill out the form on that page, but feel free to use any of the options available. If you do fill out the form and are expecting a response, please remember to include your email address in the message so we can get back to you. However, if you are logged in to your account, then your message will automatically be linked to your account, and we will be able to respond to you directly via NowTowns messages.

Briefly, any personal information associated with your account will never be sold to or shared with any third party company. Our full privacy policy is available in the NowTowns disclaimer.

If you own a business and are interested in putting it on NowTowns, please contact info@nowtowns.com for details.

NowTowns is perfectly functional without an account, allowing you to browse and discover everything that we have to offer. But, creating a free account does have some advantages:

Excluding businesses, everything you see on NowTowns is posted by people just like you. If you know of any events going on, post it in the events section for others to discover. In a band? Great! Put it in the bands section, upload your pictures, music, and upcoming shows, and let new fans discover you! Have something to sell? Post a classified!

Easily keep track of the things you want to do by adding public events to your public schedule. You can also create personal events that only you can see, for example your friend's birthday party or a doctor's appointment.

To reset your password, simply go to the password reset page and follow the instructions. You will need access to the email address that you provided when you first registered with NowTowns. If you no longer have access to that email, or if you entered in a fake email address when you registered, then there is no way for you to access that NowTowns account again. Unless you remember the password on your own, you will have to create a new account. For this reason, we highly recommend you provide your real email address when registering. Don't worry - We won't spam you, nor will we provide your email to any third party!

When you first visit NowTowns, by default you are in "Oregon" mode, which means you will see ALL content on the site. However, we realize that most people are only interested in content in their immediate area. Therefore you can set your location to any of the specific cities that we support, which will then limit what you see to items that are in that city.

You can change your location at any time by selecting it from the drop down at the very top right of your screen.

NowTowns started in Corvallis so currently most of our content is in the Corvallis and Albany areas. We are currently building Eugene as fast as possible. So keep in mind that if you view any other city besides Corvallis, you may not see a whole lot just yet. But don't worry - plenty more is on the way!

Anything on NowTowns can have an unlimited amount of pictures attached to it. You can also upload audio, video, and document files, but those types of files may only be attached to media albums.

NowTowns accepts the following formats for your media uploads:
* Pictures - .JPG
* Audio - .MP3
* Video - .MOV .MPG
* Document - .TXT .RTF .PDF .DOC

The maximum size of any file is 14 MB. We do not currently have plans to offer more formats. However, if we get enough demand for something, we will certainly consider it. So if you have a request, contact us!

When you post something on NowTowns, there are usually options to make it public and/or community, and there is an important difference between these options. Public determines WHO can view the item, Community determines WHERE it will show up on NowTowns.com.

If an item is flagged Private (read: NOT Public), that means that only your account will have access to view that item. If the item belongs to a group and/or business, then any members of said group or business will also have access to view that item. This also prevents the item from showing up in any search results.

If an item is flagged Community, that means the item will show up in the general community section of NowTowns. For example, if you create a community event, when another user goes to browse the general events section of NowTowns, your event will show up. If you do not make an item community, it won't show up in the community section, but other users will still be able to view the item if they come across it - for example if it matches a search that they perform.

It is recommended that you enable cookies in your web browser. Without them, NowTowns.com is not fully functional. For example, you will not be able to login to your account, previous search results will not be remembered, and business filters (e.g., "Open Sundays") won't behave properly.

If you are not sure if you have them turned on, or need help turning them on or off, Google has an excellent tutorial that covers most web browsers.

NowTowns is fully compatible with the following web browsers. If you are not using one of these, or are using an older version, please consider updating for the best experience with NowTowns and the rest of the internet. All software listed below is 100% free! Programs are listed in order of preference.

FireFox 1.5 (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)
Opera 8.5 (Windows)
Safari 2.0 (Mac OS X)
Internet Exploder 6 (Windows)

Some users disable JavaScript in their web browser because it has been vastly abused by many web developers. However, if used properly, JavaScript can greatly enhance the functionality of a website. For example, when you visit the login page, the username field is selected for you automatically so that you don't have to click it first. This wouldn't be possible without JavaScript.

We have attempted to use it only in areas where we think it provides great benefits to our users. This means that if JavaScript is disabled on your web browser, certain areas of NowTowns won't work properly. The front page of our site uses it fairly extensively to enhance the speed and "coolness" factor, allowing you to quickly browse events on different dates and see all the delicious menu items from the restaurants on our site.

To learn more about JavaScript, including how to turn it off or on, Google has an excellent tutorial availabe here