What it means?

Now on wards we will start supporting Annotum and for our customers we will take care the configuration, installation, upgrade and migration of Annotum on self hosted WordPress platform. So our customers don’t need to worry about all these technical things.. they can focus on publishing quality Articles.

For Google Knol users those who want to migrate to self hosted WordPress Annotum platform, We will take care of migration and all the configuration related stuff.. ( No extra charges ) so whom you are waiting for it’s time to move..

What I will get?

Along with Annotum services ( Installation, Configuration, Upgrade, Maintenance ) everything else will be include.. check out our web hosting features .

How much it will cost?

From the day one we are affordable web hosting and CMS (Content Management Software like WordPress, Drupal etc.) hosting provider with World class service and quality.
It will cost you only $55 per year for Webhosting .. and there may be some discount/ sale  running .. just ask us

So don’t wait.. be the first one to have your Annotum WordPress self hosted site up and running

Follow our another post for more information about issues and update regarding Knol to WordPress migration

As we have also written some helpful posts for Google Knol migration, this post will be more extended and detailed version and answers lots of questions, All the questions are answered on our experience with this industry for past 7 years and all views are our personal. We are trying to answer as simple as we can and If you have any more questions and if anything looks more technical in nature , please comment at last of this page … be assured we will get you an answer.

=> Why Google is shutting down Knol.

Google has started Knol as Wikipedia competitor to produce quality collaborative articles but unfortunately with time the Knols have been turned in Content Farms ( Content farms where people, companies post lots of redundant/duplicate content to take benefit of search engine algos to generate pageviews/ revenue from advertisements ).  With recent update to search algorithm Google panda , Google tried to deal with content farms to improve search algorithm , so a cut to Knol. Also Google’s newly appointed CEO Larry Page.. want to focus and invest resources on core and productive business , so they are shutting down and killing services.

=> How it will impact Knol authors

Google cared for you , Google knows that there are so many great knol authors and great articles out there.. so they partnered with WordPress and came up with  Annotum platform where Knol authors can migrate all their Knols and link and redirect the Urls . Those who don’t.. WordPress is world’s most popular blogging platform and it is running on Millions of websites and most of the big newspapers and magazine’s use WordPress to power their site.. and there is reason that Google trusted them.

=> Why they are not migrating Knols to blogger

This is a tough question to answer, but what I think is Knol was meant for Collaborative approach.. where as blogger is more towards blogging and focusing more on one on one.. that’s the reason Google is also not migrating knols directly to WordPress ( Which is also a blogging platform by nature), they created one more layer Annotum with WordPress to make it collaborative.

=> How I will migrate to WordPress

You can follow this post to know more http://expressin.net/voluntary-help-to-google-knol-users-to-wordpress-migration-272/ and there are lots of official resources to help you with it http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/google-knol-wordpress-annotum/

But some more details…  Google provide a service called Google takeout (dataliberation).. which allows you to download all your data you have with Google (contact,profile,picasa all) from http://google.com/takeout so you can download all your Knols too.  But if you download directly from there everything will come in raw html form and different files as per knols.. WordPress,blogger no one can read this format.. so they have created the automatic migration tool which make the process smooth and also the automatic redirection from Knol to WordPress…

The automatic migration will be done in single file.. so if you have 100 knols.. all will be migrated to WordPress in once.. but don’t worry then you can go to WordPress and delete or make some unpublished  if you want.

Note: The automatic migration process will migrate all your post pictures, visitors comments also, so nothing to loose

=> What’s the redirection, what needs to be done

URL_redirection  in simple words in context with Knol and WordPress will allow you to let visitor, search engines and everyone know that you have migrated to WordPress. It is required, else how will your visitors and search engine will know that your content is moved some where else.. if there is no proper redirection you will loose your visitors as well as search engines… Google and WordPress are allowing automatic as well as manual redirection for Knols during the automatic migration process

Very important…. Search engines hate duplicate content.. so if you have migrated to WordPress but no redirection on Knol.. search engine will see other as duplicate content and reduce your website reputation and ranking.. so be careful.. and some authors put the same thing on blogger , their personal website… thinking that they will get more page views.. believe me  it will harm badly in long run. ( The basic SEO).. always try to make your content original and at one place.

=> I want to migarate  Knols to Blogger or is there any other Google service I can use

Unfortunately there is no official way to migrate to Knols, but once you migrate to WordPress using automatic tools then you can export your knols from WordPress to blogger format and then import it there.. it will Work same

Some people has tweaked the raw individual html files download from http://google.com/takeout and uploaded it on bloggers but that is very time consuming will require lot of manual work and you will loose the content.. so be careful.. The correct way to do it is first import it to WordPress and then export from WordPress to blogger

There is one more Google wiki service http://sites.google.com, which allows to collaboratively  publish articles, notes.. but there are lot of limitations.. so we don’t suggest it.. but think there is something that’s why Google is moving you on WordPress.

=> What if I want to move my Knols to my own personal website ( my own domain and web hosting)

There are two ways, one you can directly download all your raw html from http://google.com/takeout and upload it to your own site.. but it will not allow you the simple publishing and interaction platform for you and your visitors.. so the other way is WordPress comes free.. so you can upload the WordPress on your website and then import the knols there.. there are lot more technical things involved with it.. but those are beyond the scope of this post.. email us .. we will help you with that.

Hope this will help Knol authors with their queries.. if there is any thing else .. please comment below… we will answer it

What you will get

Your own one personal domain of your choice for a year ( .com, .org, .net, .info, .in anyone) a $11.99 value
Free shared WordPress hosting  for a  year $55 value
Free configuration Google apps standard edition ( you will get 10 personalized emails and lot more features directly from Google * )
Free theft and privacy protection
Free DNS management tools
and each and every feature we offer http://expressin.net/about-expressin/features/

and all this to grab for just $21

Hurry! this is valid till stock last .. just drop a email at offer@expressin.net to know how to get it.. it’s simple..

Please feel free to reach us by commenting to this post if you have any issue.

How your Knol/Website will look when you migrate from Google Knol to WordPress

Here is a demo for how it looks when you migrate from Google Knol to WordPress http://simplyakm.wordpress.com , We have used all the Official methods for migration

Current issues with Knol Migration

The Knol authors those who have large number of knol.. the automatic workflow is not working.. We have raised the issue with WordPress.. we will keep this up to date as soon as we get the solution

Update 02-12-2011 : Comments are not visible
The automatic Knol to WordPress migration process, also imports the comments but there is some issue with WordPress that the comments are invisible by default on WordPress.com, WordPress is working on it to resolve it. Else after import you need to edit every article and scroll down to Discussion there enabled  Allow Comments check box.

Update: 01-12-2011 : Knol import is working now
Wordpress replied today that they have fixed it and we have tried it with one of our client who has more than 1500 Knols and it worked. Please post in comments here if you have still any issues.

Update: 25-11-2011.. We got following reply from WordPress

We are currently tracking a problem that affects users with large numbers of Knols.
We should have this fixed up at some point next week, but until then I am going to have to ask you to be patient while we work on it.

Resources

Questions and Answers related to Knols to WordPress migration

A Simple Getting started Guide to WordPress

Ask questions and concerns related to the Knol to WordPress migration

Annotum Support Site

But there are some users who are so used to of Google eco system and despite of Going to WordPress they want to remain with Google and want to transfer / migrate the Google Knols to Blogger. Unfortunately till now there is no official way to do this, but there is one simple way is , you first import the knols to WordPress.com using the step by step guide and later in WordPress.com > Tools > Export

It will confirm you what to export? Select All content and download the export file on your computer ( The format called as RSS, WXR…) it will contain all your articles of WordPress.com

Now login to Blogger and click on the blog and then import the exported file of WordPress, select the file from your desktop and it will be automatically imported and updated with Blogger.

Still we didn’t get any chance to try the above method for Google knols but it should work. Feel free to reach us or comment if you have any doubts or what’s your experience of migrating Google knols to blogger.