The mikoto website has received a number of cosmetic and functional changes that include a new header image, lighter woodgrain background and a new gallery page.
The header is filled with some of the characters that will be on the next run of T-shirts I print for Paddington Markets that you can currently buy online from my mikoto profile at Redbubble.
The new gallery page will steadily grow with mikoto designs and drawings That can be then used on website such as myspace, PC desktops, screen savers and print outs. I will include not only finished designs but preliminary sketches and hand drawings.
The real reason for the change though was to fix my website after it was hacked into!
I only realised that it had happend after I was adding the entry about the mikoto having a stall at the 2008 big day out. I hit preview after typing the entry and the page wouldn’t load… I noticed at the bottom my browser that all the traffic was being diverted to another website. It was a creepy feeling and I had know idea what to do.
I googled ‘mikoto’ and the bad new was confirmed by them - they had blocked my website from any searches and notified me through google webmaster that I had some badware on my site that I needed to get rid of.
The hack had replaced a number of key files and diverted all mikoto traiffic to another address and so I had accept that rebuilding the entire site from scratch was in order. It took a long time but fortunately I had most of the content backed up in some way, shape or form.
The whole event was scary but also educational.
I never though I would not ever get hacked into with the standard security measures I had in place. During the ordeal my serivce provider MD Web Hosting and Google were both very helpful and gave me this very simple advice:
“Make all your passwords really really long, and change them regularly and it won’t happen again.”
mikoto.com.au was hacked into using a brute force attack and they had picked my 10letter only password with ease. Professional advice suggests it needs to be a combination of more than 20 letters, numbers and $ymbols in order to to be hack proof.
I hope for some of you out there this entry was helpful maybe prevents others from any unwelcome visitors to your own websites.
Scotty 
Thats sad to hear Mikoto,
Unfortunately thats what happens with running websites. I would strongly suggest that you change you web hoster to someone who is unix based. It will much more secure and you wont have to have a ridiculously long password.