Hurricane Florence Info & Instructions, if you Experience a Storm Related Issue or Outage
Stay Informed
Please stay tuned to local media (TV, Newspaper, and radio), and emergency services, for up-to-date information, instructions, and preparation tips. If your city or county offers the option to sign up for alerts, consider doing so. Check the website, for your city or county, for information on signing up for emergency alerts. Williamsburg, James City County, York County, Newport News, Hampton, Virginia Beach, and other localities have emergency alerts you can sign up for.
If you are a business, contact your computer or I.T. support organization, for preparation tips, that apply to your specific computer or I.T. setup. If you don’t already have a relationship with a computer or I.T. support organization, a list of local computer shops is available.
Potentially Affected Widomaker Services
Some of Widomaker’s services and servers are with providers, or data centers, that are located in the areas that may be affected by the storm. As a result, some of Widomaker’s services and servers may be affected, during, or after the storm.
Additionally, if electric or telephone service is interrupted, at our office in Newport News, you may be unable to reach us by telephone, until power and telephone service is restored.
Normally we will post about Widomaker service affecting issues, on one, or more, of the following Widomaker web, or social media, pages. If one page is unavailable, due to a server outage, try the other pages.
Remember, if your home or office Internet connection is unavailable, you may still be able to access these Internet resources from a smartphone with cellular data. Some smartphones have a Hotspot feature that allows other devices to connect through the smartphone’s cellular data connection. Ask your cellular provider, or smartphone manufacturer, about those options, and how to use them.
- Widomaker’s Members Home Page (http://home.widomaker.com)
- Widomaker’s Weblog/Blog (http://weblog.widomaker.com).
- Widomaker’s Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/widomakercom)
- Widomaker’s Twitter Feed (https://twitter.com/widomakercom)
DSL Outages
You may want to print out the following information, before there is an interruption of DSL Internet service, in the area…
Storms that cause power outages or flooding have the potential to cause Verizon phone and DSL Internet outages. If your DSL Internet service is affected by the storm, please wait until power has been restored, THEN, if your DSL service is not working, perform these steps:
- Power off, and back on, all of your equipment, including your DSL modem, router, and computers or other devices. Wait five (5) minutes to see if your DSL service is working. If it’s still not working, continue to the next step.
- Make a note of the status of the lights on your DSL modem and router. Specifically, take note of which lights are on, off, or flashing.
- If you have a home phone line from Verizon, check your home landline telephone service. Do you get a dial-tone, and are you able to make and receive calls? Make a note of this. If you have no dial-tone on your landline telephone, report the no-dial-tone issue to the telephone company. If you use Verizon, their support number is 1-800-837-4966. Once the no-dial-tone issue is resolved, your DSL should start working, again. If not, continue to the next step.
- Contact us to report that your DSL Internet service is not working. E-mail us, from an alternate Internet connection, such as from a smartphone with cellular data, or call our office (757-253-7621), and leave a message. Provide ALL of the information, you made a note of, from the previous steps, above. Also include as much of the following information as possible:
- Your name
- Your account number, if known
- Your home/office telephone number
- Your DSL telephone number, if different
- Your cellphone number, state if it is a smartphone, and provide the name of the cellular carrier
- Your e-mail address
- If you live in a subdivision, or named neighborhood, which one?
Other Widomaker Services (Website, E-mail, Hosting, etc.)
If we are unable to post updates, on any service affecting issues, due to power or Internet outages at our office, you can check the status pages for our server providers, to see if there are any known issues that could be affecting Widomaker services.
The following organizations provide various servers and services to Widomaker. They each have status pages where they will provide information about outages or issues with their systems.
NetActuate provides several servers to Widomaker, which are located in Raleigh-Durham, NC (RDU). If those servers are impacted it may affect Widomaker’s home pages, and DNS services. NetActuate will be posting updates on Hurricane Florence on their status page, here. Only issues affecting their Raleigh-Durham (RDU) datacenter have the potential to affect Widomaker…
ServInt provides Widomaker’s web hosting servers which are located in their, Reston, VA, datacenter. Only issues affecting their, Reston datacenter have the potential to affect Widomaker. Their status page is, here…
Widomaker’s new e-mail service (for widomaker.com or tni.net addresses) is provided by an organization based in Toronto, but traffic passes through a facility in, Ashburn, VA. Only issues affecting their “Hosted Email Cluster B” have the potential to affect Widomaker. Their status page is, here…
