2016-07-25 13:40:51
I've started having the database track birth dates and death dates. Behind the scenes, this is something I've been half keeping track of for some time, but it never ended up in the actual tables used on the site. Now I've got some uses in mind for them, so they have been. HOWEVER, since it's only 3 years after starting the site that I've deemd it important, that means there's a lot of missing data. Hello! Project member birth dates should be pretty complete. If when adding in other people I found a Wikipedia page or something for them that listed a birth date, that is also in. That still leaves the vast majority (composers, arrangers, lyricists...) with missing data. However, since most of my immediate ideas center around the group members themselves, not the end of the world. Death data is much more incomplete; I didn't even have a column for this on my offline spreadsheet. So as of this writing there are only two people with this info in there, though I know there are many more that should.

One of the differences you might notice is in the order by which people are listed in various locations. As far as the database is concerned Seniority is largely based on date of a person's first credit, but in cases of ties (such as when a generation of several members debut on the same single) in the end it would come down to the happenstance of what order I typed them into the database. Now it can use birth date for these ties, which basically matches what they do in the real world. The member order on a group page now also uses the birth date and ignores the larger Seniority value. This prevents situations like Berryz Koubou ordering being out of whack due to members' prior work in ZYX or 4KIDS.

I've tried to make it order properly when multiple groups perform together too. First group seniority, then how the individuals would be ordered within the group. There are always unusual circumstances and it would be difficult to make sure every situation sorts out perfectly, but I've got it working on the extreme case of Busu ni Naranai Tetsugaku so I'm pretty happy for now.

Another addition is that when viewing songs, the list of vocalists will also show their age at the time of the song's release, as well as an average. Of course the songs are recorded earlier than that, but what are you gonna do.

2016-07-19 13:12:25
The Hello! Project releases for the first half of 2016 have been added in.

Behind the scenes, fixed some problems that was leading things like Google search bots to try following thousands of bad links. The links would WORK, but not give what was expected--so basically both a big waste of the processing time and cache for both this server and the bots. Normal end users shouldn't notice a difference.

I haven't mentioned in updates, but I've been testing out ads which you may see come or go. Not that I figure this place is the key to Big Bucks, but if ads could cover the cost of domain registration that'd at least be something. But considering the factors of 1) Few visitors here 2) Ad pay rates kind of suck for non-obtrusive ads that don't require clicking 3) The best rates are from Google AdSense which rejected this site for not enough textual content, I doubt they'll be sticking around.