Today Google announced some “out of season” spring cleaning: they will be closing Google Knol next May. Knol was originally created “to help improve web content by enabling experts to collaborate on in-depth articles”.

Because of this, we at Crowd Favorite worked closely with Solvitor to create an open-source scholarly authoring and publishing platform based on WordPress that could serve as a new home for Knol users. Personally, I’ve been involved with this by leading, in conjunction with Solvitor, the design and development efforts around the new WordPress theme available today: Annotum.

• Annotum on Github (forks welcome)
• Annotum theme on WordPress.org

This theme is unlike any other I’ve seen, it’s a sophisticated authoring and publishing platform with numerous features baked in. Originally designed with scientific and scholarly journals in mind, this is a great all-around theme for any publishers.

Knol users can now download their existing content via Google Takeout and take it wherever they’d like and/or set up a Annotum-based WordPress.com blog with a one-click(ish) process.

I’m excited to see the theme in the wild and proud to have worked with the excellent teams at Crowd Favorite, Solvitor, Google, and Automattic. Here’s a bit more about the project where you can learn more about it:

• Annotum project website
• Annotum overview on Crowd Favorite
• More spring cleaning out of season on the Official Google Blog
• Google Knols Move to WordPress on the WordPress.com blog