Hello! Ranking is a next generation Hello! Project fan site that allows one to see how their favorites change over time and to share those rankings with others. Bryan (One half of the folks who brought you the Hello! Party last year) has been gracious enough to allow a few folks a sneak peek at the upcoming Hello! Ranking website.

Since this was a beta version of the site things like artist images and other areas of the site were not available or were still under construction. But what I saw was enough for me to say that the final product will end up being a very nicely polished piece of work. Anyway let’s get started with the tour shall we?

Note: Please click on any image to enlarge it. It will make what I am talking about much easier to understand if you can see the screen shots in full resolution. Thank you.

This is the home page of Hello! Ranking. As you can see it’s rather sparse but as I have explained before this is a beta version. The navigation is intuitive as all relative information is presented to you in a clean and easy to understand manner. Above the banner to is the link to the H!R News network and to the left of that are icons for your rankings, settings, search and the logout button. Within the banner is more navigation with links to what will be discussion forums, information about artists/groups and music.

What is most important are the buttons below the banner in blue. That is the heart and soul of this site and there are 3 options.

• Rank a Group
• Rank All Artists
• Rank All Groups

I started with the Rank A Group option.

There’s not a lot to explain here since just by looking at the interface it’s fairly easy to grasp how one would go about the ranking process. The sidebar on the right explains a little more about how to rank groups that may have graduated members. Basically you’re given to the option to rank the current group or the entire group with graduated members included. Which is a nice touch  and challenges you to really think about who you really like in a group such as Morning Musume.

I decided to rank Buono! as part of my test drive of the system. It was as simple as clicking on the drop down box and selecting Buono! Once that was completed the names of the members showed up and I was allowed to drag and drop their names in the order of my liking.

In this case, Miya is #1, Airi is #2 & Momo is #3.  The third step is optional and from what I was told there is an unlimited number of words you can enter in the text box. So if you want to write a long ode to the virtues of Miya then you’re free to do so. I kept my comments simple.

Once your ranking is complete simply click on the green Rank! button and you’ll get a message saying your ranking has been entered into the system.

To be sure I actually got what I was doing I decided to Rank All Artists.

You have two options. The first being to rank the current H!P line up or if you’re one of  the more hardcore you can rank the entire roster past & present. Below is a sample ranking I had started.

The idea of ranking the entire project (if you choose to do so) is daunting and many hours could be spent just figuring out who you want in the list. I’m figuring many a fan will be glued to the screen shuffling names around until they get their list just right. I know I’ll end up making a flow chart or something to figure out what my rankings are. My top 2 are set as you can see but after that it’s a free for all.

I bet a lot of you are now seeing the potential in this. The system will keep track of  all your rankings so there’s no need to go back & start from scratch. You can just log in and make another change from your previous ranking & save it.

Although I was only supposed to test the ranking system I decided to look around other areas of the site. Of interest to me was the previously mentioned H!R News area.

You can see that they will pull feeds from various H!P and J-Pop sources which will allow people a sort of one-stop solution for their music news. Much better than having a billion tabs or windows open isn’t it?

I had fun playing around with the ranking system & messing around other parts of the site. I could (and probably will) spend countless hours here. I can’t wait to see this go live.