The Warm Showers Community is a free worldwide hospitality exchange for touring cyclists. People who are willing to host touring cyclists sign up and provide their contact information, and may occasionally have someone stay with them and share great stories and a drink.

In 1993, Terry Zmrhal and Geoff Cashman were the originators of this service. In 1996, Roger Gravel began updating and managing the Warm Showers List after he found that it hadn't been maintained. Randy Fay turned the list into a database-and-map enabled website in 2005 and eventually assumed the registrar role from Roger when Roger retired in 2009. Now a small but dedicated group of volunteers manage the site and communication with our members.

Well, we don't have very many rules, but there are a few.

1. The member information on this site is to be used only for members to contact each other about hospitality , and not for any other purpose. People have graciously given their information for the purpose of arranging hospitality.
2. The WSL is for hospitality for private individuals (or couples or very small groups) touring on bicycles. Please don't use it for other types of hospitality - for your large group of teenagers doing a cross-country ride, or for your large-group fund-raising event (even though it's for AIDS or cancer or some other fine cause).
3. Please keep your information up-to-date, and please be responsive . Every cyclist deserves to expect at least a response from each host contacted. If your information is out of date or you are not responsive, it can be very frustrating for a cyclist.
4. Please log into the site at least once every year and check your information We request that you log into the site at least once every year to check your information and update it. Accounts that get out of date will be deleted (we'll send you an email first).
5. When seeking hospitality you should contact prospective hosts in advance. And if your plans change please let your host know as soon as possible.
6. Hosts are not allowed to require any payment, and no businesses (hotels, B&B's, etc.) are accepted into membership. Guests, of course, may help out as needed and of course you can fix a meal, bring some beer, etc.
7. No commercial use at all, please, You may not use the site to promote your business.
8. Feel free to say no to any hosting request if you're uncomfortable or for any other reasons. For example, if you request notice, and someone calls you on the spur of the moment, just say "sorry, I have to have some notice, as it says on my account".
9. Minors are not allowed to use the site. Sorry, for legal and liability reasons, minors (people not of legal age) are not allowed to use the site.

We have a video How to find hosts on Warmshowers.org that summarizes the process.

In brief hospitality is typically requested by

• Finding prospective warmshowers hosts in the location you desire.
• Reading the prospective host's account to see if it fits your needs.
• Contacting the host to request hospitality -- which is usually done by email but can be done by phone.

The warmshowers website has three tools that can be used to locate members:

• An interactive map with icons representing the location of warmshowers members
• A list of warmshowers members residing in a specified country, state or province
• A search function which allows you to search for a specific town or host name.

To use these tools you will need to be logged into the warmshowers website.

To use the map:

• Click the "Map" link found in the menu on the upper left-hand side of most website pages (or go to http://www.warmshowers.org/map)
• The view that appears in the Google map will probably not show the location that you are interested in. One way to get to your desired location is to use the "country" pull-down menu and the "city/state/suburb" box on the map page. First select the country that you want and then type the first couple of letters of a city/town/suburb in your area of interest. For example to bring up Las Vegas, Nevada on the map choose "United States" from the "country" menu. Then simply typing the letters "la" will bring up a new menu in which Las Vegas appears as one of the choices.
• Two icons are used to indicate the location of warmshowers members. The red icons mean a single member resides in this location. A blue icon indicates that there are two or more members living here. If you zoom into a location with a blue icon far enough it should disintegrate into multiple red icons.
• Also on the map page you will find listed to the right (outside of the map itself) some of the names and addresses of the warmshowers members who reside in the area shown on the map. If you move your cursor over their highlighted names the map will move to center their location icon. Also a balloon pop-up appears above this icon which lists this member's name (highlighted), their address, and the phrase "Click to email".
• Clicking on the highlighted member's name will take you to their warmshowers account. Here you can read about them and the hospitality that they offer.
• Clicking on the "Click to email" link will take you to a simple email tool that you can use to send a message to this prospective host. After filling in the Subject and Message fields and then clicking "Send e-mail" the message will be sent.

To generate a list of warmshowers members in a specified region:

• Click the "List members on one page" link found in the menu on the upper left-hand side of most website pages (or go to http://www.warmshowers.org/member_list)
• On the webpage which appears select the country and then the province/state; after clicking the "Submit" button the desired list will soon appear
• This tool will allow you to go to a prospective host's warmshowers account so that you can read what they have written there. To do so simply click on the member's highlighted username which is given in the second column of the listing
• And you can also send an email to a prospective host using the same simple tool described in the map option above. This is done by clicking on the highlighted "email link" in the third column of the listing

As a prospective host it is important to respond to email from other members requesting hospitality promptly. If you are unsure whether you can host it is much better to send them a response telling them so (rather than wait until you know whether you can host or not).

When contacted by a member who requests hospitality you should read their account. If the sender used the website's email tool the message you receive will have a link to their warmshowers account. You should learn a bit about them (depending upon what they chosen to write). Some cyclists have an online website or blog listed in their account. Oftentimes a description of their tour will be given there. You can also scroll to the bottom of their account to see if they have been recommended by other members.

You can reward guests whose company you enjoyed by writing them a recommendation. A positive recommendation can make it easier for a touring cyclist to obtain hospitality from other members in the future. In the unlikely case you think others should be warned about a member, you can post a "negative recommendation". Make sure you contact us if you have serious problems, though.

Before contacting a prospective host read their warmshowers account carefully. Be aware of the hospitality that they offer as well as any restrictions that they may have. Their account may also contain other useful information posted by previous guests such as a recommendation and/or the host's responsiveness to previous requests for hospitality.

You can thank a host publicly by writing a good recommendation about them. A recommendation has the additional benefit of informing other members of the positive nature of your encounter.

The timeliness of a prospective host's response to your email requesting hospitality can be shared with other members. Please click the link on a member's page to mark them as responsive or unresponsive.

At the bottom of each member's account is a box that contains the highlighted links labeled "Mark this member as responsive" and "Mark this member as Unresponsive". Clicking on either of these links will add the following statement to the bottom of their account "X members have marked [username] as [un]responsive" where X is the number of members who have made this selection.
Recording a host's responsiveness is a relatively new feature. And many guests forget to use it. So if you don't find a member marked as either responsive or unresponsive you shouldn't read too much into it.
If unsure how to access a member's account the website search tool can help you locate it. Click here for assistance on using this search function.

To post a recommendation to the member's account click the link near the bottom of the page labeled "Click here to add a recommendation". On the "Create Member Recommendation" page which appears you simply need to type your comments into the box labeled "Please tell about your experience with this member:", fill in the year/month that you met this individual, identify them as your guest or your host, and then click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.

Member recommendations are a nice way to publicly thank others. However, some members provide this feedback religiously while others do not. Hence do not assume that a member is not a good host because there are no recommendations associated with their accounts.

If you are unsure how to access a member's account the member search tool can help you locate it.

Log in using your current password and go to my account and click the "edit" tab. You can change it there. Click "submit".

If you have lost or forgotten your password, go to the request a new password page, which will send a link to you by email. You can click on the link and you'll land on the page to change your password.

Just log into your account and go to my account and click on the "Edit" tab. On the Edit tab, Look down the page to the "Warm Showers Host Profile". There you'll find a checkbox for "Not Currently Available". Click that box and nobody will find you via the map or member searches. Please remember that this list is reciprocal hospitality, so you're expected to offer hospitality in the future (perhaps the distant future) even if you can't right now.

Make sure you have clicked SUBMIT. Or maybe there was an error - look for the popup message telling you that. If you accidentally don't complete the state/province or country, zipcode, your full name, "about me", etc., your submission won't be accepted. Please read the error message and fill in the required fields. If you're still having trouble, send us a note using the contact form.

You can click the "Delete Account" button at the bottom of the page when editing your account. Follow the prompts. Remember, if you just want people not to contact you for a period of time, you can just click the "not currently available" checkbox on that same "edit account" page.

Most likely the email went into your spam or bulk mail folder. Please look there first. If you don't find it, please send a note to us using the contact form.

This is where you log in, and don't get any error, but it still says you're not logged in. The problem is usually "cookies" being turned off or not working. To log into the site you must allow "cookies". These are not a threat to you and are required by most internet sites to work correctly. To allow cookies, you can

• In Internet Explorer, choose Tools->Internet Options->Privacy and set it to anything less than "block all cookies" or...
• Click "sites" in the same dialog box and allow cookies for www.warmshowers.org or...
• In some cases, we've seen IE misbehave and you'll need to delete all cookies (Tools->Internet Options->General->Delete Cookies)
• Try out the excellent free Firefox or Chrome browsers as an alternative. If you can't install firefox because you don't have permissions on the computer, try Firefox Portable Edition, which doesn't require any installation.
• In Internet Explorer 7 and 8 you can fix most problems by going to Tools->Internet Options and on the "Advanced" tab click the "reset" button.
• Make sure you've cleared the cache: In IE6 Tools->Internet Options->Delete Files. In Firefox Tools->Clear Private Data; check "cache" and "Authenticated sessions" and click "Clear private data now".
• Any program that blocks cookies will cause this problem. For example, CA Security Center may block cookies in all programs. Try temporarily disabling your firewall and virus protection to see if they're the problem.
• If you can't solve this problem, please ask for help. Send a note using the contact form.

You can get a one-time login link mailed to you by clicking on request new password on the left side of the site. Here you can enter either your username or your email address. It will send you an email with a link that you can click on to log in - and then change your password.

This link may land in your spam folder, so look there. And please add wsl@warmshowers.org to your "Approved senders" list or your address book to prevent that from happening.

The link is a pretty long link, and some email clients (or webmail systems) may break it in half. If you then click on the first part, it won't work right, and you'll get: You have tried to use a one-time login link which has either been used or is no longer valid. Please request a new one using the form below. If this happens, you need to use copy-and-paste to put the two parts together and paste them into the URL field of your web browser.

If you can log in, you're a member. But you may be set to "not currently available", in which case your name won't show in most searches.

We do delete members annually if they haven't logged in for more than a year, and we delete members when they are consistently unreachable. In both of these cases we make multiple attempts to contact you first.

If you account has been deleted, you are always welcome to create a new one at any time.

Pictures are generally cached by your own browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox or whatever). You can hold down the Shift key and press the "refresh" icon on top of the browser and it will normally refresh entire page and you should see the new picture. -F5 will usually do the same thing.

To access the search tool click the highlighted "Search" link found in the menu on the upper left-hand side of most website pages.

This tool will help you locate warmshowers members as well as content on the website. You may select one of the following three tabs:

• member names and cities: choose this tab if you know the member's name or the city/town they reside in.
• username: choose this tab if you know the username of the member you are looking for
• content: choose this tab if you are not looking for a member but rather a page on the website

After typing in the appropriate search term(s) click on "Search" and the results should soon appear.

If you used the search tool to locate a member's account simply click on the member's name in the search results and you will be transferred to their account page.

There's a writeup on using the map here.

Yes, the map uses a lot of bandwidth and processing power, and if it's too painful to wait for it, you may want to try the List members on one page feature to list all the members in the geographic area you're looking at, or the Search for members feature to look for a specific city or town. The map is a nice feature, but it doesn't work well on very slow computers or internet connections.

First, please make sure that all your address information is correct (go to "my account" on the menu). If you have provided at least a partial address, particularly with the postal code, that will usually give an approximate (and sometimes very accurate) location.
If that doesn't do it, please set your own location on the map. Go to "my account" and click on the "map my location" tab. Zoom in or out, move around, and click where you actually live, and then press the "submit" button.

Yes, you have the option to receive an email automatically when new content appears on the website. FeedBurner is the name of this subscription service. Please click on this link to subscribe to this service.

The most common type of new content is a new post made in a forum. If you wish to respond to this post, please remember that you must log in to the website and go to that forum page to add your comment (clicking the "reply" button in your email application and typing in your response will NOT do this for you).

Unfortunately FeedBurner is not configured to permit email address changes. Instead you must go through the following procedure when you have a new email address:

1. Unsubscribe from FeedBurner: At the bottom of every email FeedBurner sends there is a link to unsubscribe from their service. Simply click on this link and follow the instructions
2. Re-subscribe to FeedBurner with your new email address: Click on this link to go to the webpage where you can re-subscribe to FeedBurner using your new email address

Send them on! We want this to be a great resource! Send your thoughts to us using the contact form. Also, please suggest your own entries to this FAQ, or leave a comment here.

There is also a forum for discussing feature requests and bugs.

The idea is that you're just committing to host "someday". Many of us don't know when we'll be able to host, but most of us will be able to at some point in our lives.

Please remember to keep the "not currently available" checkbox checked when you're not available to host.

Please let us know about all problems you have with the site. We're working hard to improve it. Of course, we're just volunteers, so it can take some time to get things fixed. Please send a note via the contact form with errors you encounter, problems you have, etc. Please do be patient with us. This is a big project and it continues to mature over time.

If you have the time and are a native speaker of your language, with a good grasp of English, please contact us and we'll tell you what it entails. It's a fair chunk of work, and has to be maintained in the future, so you're signing up for a bit of a commitment. Volunteers have already translated the site into Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Yes, it does cost to maintain the site, and if you'd like to donate to the cause, just go to the Donations page and send any amount you'd like via Paypal. The money received will go toward maintaining the site.

When using the site in a public place, please click "log out" at the bottom of the menu on the left hand side when you're done using the site.

There are a number of technologies used here:

• Drupal, an open source web content management system, is the core. It uses the PHP language and the the mysql database to do its job.
• The Google Maps API does the map presentation.
• We turn addresses into points on the map (geocode the addresses) using Google's geocoding service as well as the fine service from geonames.org

Warmshowers.org is now registered as a Limited Liability Corporation in the state of Colorado, USA. This was done just in case some day somebody decided to sue us. The various volunteers and workers are shielded from liability this way.

We have not filed as a tax-exempt organization, as the amount of contributions received each year doesn't warrant that at this point.