There are certainly variations of ways for attempting to own one’s own annotations using Hypothesis and syndicating them to one’s website (via a PESOS workflow), but I thought I’d outline the quickest version I’m aware of that requires little to no programming or code, but also allows some relatively pretty results. While some of the portions below are WordPress specific, there’s certainly no reason they couldn’t be implemented for other systems.
Saving individual annotations one at a time
Here’s an easy method for taking each individual annotation you create on Hypothesis and quickly porting it to your site:
Create an IFTTT.com recipe to port your Hypothesis RSS feed into WordPress posts. Generally chose an “If RSS, then WordPress” setup and use the following data to build the recipe:
- Input feed:
https://hypothes.is/stream.atom?user=username(change username to your user name) - Optional title:
📑 {{EntryTitle}} - Body:
{{EntryContent}} from {{EntryUrl}} <br />{{EntryPublished}} - Categories: Highlight (use whatever categories you prefer, but be aware they’ll apply to all your future posts from this feed)
- Tags: hypothes.is
- Post status (optional): I set mine to “Draft” so I have the option to keep it privately or to publish it publicly at a later date.
Modify any of the above fields as necessary for your needs. IFTTT.com usually polls your feed every 10-15 minutes. You can usually pretty quickly take this data and turn it into your post kind of preference–suggestions include read, bookmark, like, favorite, or even reply. Add additional categories, tags, or other metadata as necessary for easier searching at a later time.
Here’s an example of one on my website that uses this method. I’ve obviously created a custom highlight post kind of my own for more specific presentation as well as microformats markup.
Aggregating lots of annotations on a single page
If you do a lot of annotations on Hypothesis and prefer to create a bookmark or read post that aggregates all of your annotations on a given post, the quickest way I’ve seen on WordPress to export your data is to use the Hypothesis Aggregator plugin [GitHub].
- Create a tag “key” for a particular article by creating an acronym from the article title followed by the date and then the author’s initials. This will allow you to quickly conglomerate all the annotations for a particular article or web page. As an example for this article I’d use:
OUHOAH062218CA. In addition to any other necessary tags, I’ll tag each of my annotations on the particular article with this somewhat random, yet specific key for which there are unlikely to be any other similar tags in my account. - Create a bookmark, read, reply or other post kind to which you’ll attach your annotations. I often use a bookmarklet for speed here.
- Use the Hypothesis Aggregator’s short code for your tag and username to pull your annotations for the particular tag. It will look like this:
[hypothesis user = 'username' tags = 'tagname']If you’re clever, you could include this shortcode in the body of your IFTTT recipe (if you’re using drafts) and simply change the tag name to the appropriate one to save half a step or need to remember the shortcode format each time.
If you’re worried that Hypothes.is may eventually shut down, the plugin quits working (leaving you with ugly short codes in your post) or all of the above, you can add the following steps as a quick work-around.
- Input the shortcode as above, click on the “Preview” button in WordPress’s Publish meta box which will open a new window and let you view your post.
- Copy the preview of the annotations you’d like to keep in your post and paste them over your shortcode in the Visual editor tab on your draft post. (This will maintain the simple HTML formatting tags, which you can also edit or supplement if you like.)
- I also strip out the additional unnecessary data from Hypothesis Aggregator about the article it’s from as well as the line about who created the annotation which isn’t necessary as my post will implicitly have that data. Depending on how you make your post (i.e. not using the Post Kinds Plugin), you may want to keep it.
As Greg McVerry kindly points out, Jon Udell has created a simple web-tool for inputting a few bits of data about a set of annotations to export them variously in HTML, CSV, or JSON format. If you’re not a developer and don’t want to fuss with Hypothesis’ API, this is also a reasonably solid method of quickly exporting subsections of your annotations and cutting and pasting them onto your website. It does export a lot more data that one might want for their site and could require some additional clean up, particularly in HTML format.
Perhaps with some elbow grease and coding skill, sometime in the future, we’ll have a simple way to implement a POSSE workflow that will allow you to post your annotations to your own website and syndicate them to services like Hypothesis. In the erstwhile, hopefully this will help close a little of the data gap for those using their websites as their commonplace books or digital notebooks.
Thank you for this careful, granular reply. I’ll continue to build & play.
An Outline for Using Hypothesis for Owning your Annotations and Highlights, By Chris Aldrich @ChrisAldrich
boffosocko.com/2018/06/23/an-…
I had almost forgotten that it was not so long ago that I’d outlined how I use Hypothesis to own my own highlights and annotations on my website. For the benefit of those in Dr. McVerry’s EDU522 course, I’ve included a link to it here.
For those who would like to see some examples you can find several below:
Specific stand-alone highlight posts
Specific stand-alone annotation posts
Other posts (typically reads) which I’ve highlighted and/or otherwise annotated things
I created the stand-alone posts using customized post kinds using some custom code for the Post Kinds Plugin.
I’ll begin tagging some of these pieces with the tag “backstage” for those in the EDU522 class that wish to follow along with how I’ve built or done certain things. You can subscribe to these future posts by adding
/feed/to the end of the URL for this tag archive.To some extent my IndieWeb Collection/Research page has a lot of these “backstage” type posts for those who are interested. As part of the IndieWeb community, I’ve been documenting how and what I’ve been doing on my site for a while, hopefully these backstage posts will help other educators follow in my path without need to blaze as much of it anew for themselves.
Backstage posts are in actuality a very IndieWeb thing:
Syndicated copies to: WordPress icon
This Article was mentioned on kimberlyhirsh.com
Chris, thank you for this explanation regarding your thoughts on annotation versus highlight post kinds. I have used your helpful example to post my Hypothes.is highlights and annotations on my WordPress site. But I am unable to find any annotation or highlight post kinds using the most recent published version (3.3.3) of the Post Kinds plugin. Did you have to manually add your own kinds to accomplish this?
In our age of reading everything online, do you ever miss reading in print? Here’s a solution.I absolutely love the Chrome plugin, “Hypothesis”. It allows you to highlight and annotate webpages.The days of annotating in printYears ago if an article was longer than a page, I would print the article to read. This was a great method for engaging with the writing, because I was able to underline passages, and immediately work out thoughts in the margins.Sometimes the thoughts would be directly connected to the article. Other times, my thoughts would meander off into other interesting areas. Both situations are great, because they are generating thought.The paper format gave me a ready stack of articles to always read in lunch breaks and train rides. If the article didn’t generate any side-notes, I would simply tear the top of the paper to indicate that I can eventually recycle the paper.The paper gave me a method of both having a ready stack of articles to read, but more importantly to have a way of engaging with the text.The days of reading online, how to annotate?Now that I work from home, I rarely print articles anymore. When I read online, it’s just skimming through, then I normally forget the article. Nothing branched off. Nothing generated.With Hypothesis, I can highlight the text as I read it. And I can type out side annotations next to my highlight.I’ve used Hypothesis on and off for the past few years. It’s always a pleasure to use the plugin, but I never really delved deeply into the annotation feature. Most times I highlight a passage, and then move on.I really miss that part of where I would consume the text, mull over the text, and think about how it applies to me. Asking myself, “why am I reacting to this text? What does this make me think?”Annotating online helps you to write moreToday I made a conscious effort to just put my thoughts into the little annotation box. Just to keep typing. Thinking that nobody else will see my thoughts. Just type.And it worked. Ends up, my side notes became three separate blog posts in my online notepad on spudart.org:Thoughts on plazasWe strive for rhythmAre the suburbs compact? Or are they sprawl? Maybe both.All based on one article, “Marmora and Giddings“. Granted, the article is really fascinating, so it was just overflowing with concepts to consider.Annotating online helps you connect with writersThis also gave me the chance to leave some longer-form comments on the article for the author.As an author myself, I know how much I incredibly value people’s feedback. To know someone is reading, and that they actually have a response. Man, that is really one of the greatest things in life. I’m thankful for online pages where you can immediately respond to someone’s writing.Your annotations and highlights are preservedIf you go back to the original article, you’ll see your highlights on the page!I can see this being helpful in areas where I use resources like Bible commentaries. I might come back to a particular Bible verse years later, and see my previous highlights and notes.Even if the article is taken offline, you’ll still have the text from your highlights, and the text from your notes. In fact, Chris Aldrich as found a way of exporting your Hypothesis highlights and notes.Let’s annotate!Now I’m going to make a more considered effort to use this Hypothesis plugin to write more of my reaction thoughts from articles. If you join Hypothesis, let me know. I’m user mattmaldre.Related Enjoyed this blog post?Receive notifications of new posts via email mattmaldre.com I agree to Matt’s very nice privacy policy. (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);