Senior Commitment Post Generator CO'25

form interface
generated post
second screen
code snippet

Inspiration

In this crazy year, us seniors have lost out on so many traditional events such as prom, homecoming, senior skip day, and just hanging out. However, one tradition remains within our grasp: senior commitment instagram accounts! The time is here for seniors to decide where they will be attending college next year and share this exciting news with the world! Every april, thousands of high schools create instagram accounts to celebrate their senior class and showcase where their seniors are going next fall. However, these accounts are a PITA to run. The account manager has to spend dozens of hours handcrafting HUNDREDS of individual commitment posts, and many managers end up giving up on posting because they do not have the time or energy to keep up. However, the format of them is practically identical, so we realized that this process could be easily automated. Hopefully with our College Commitment Post Generator, more seniors can participate in this fun senior tradition.

What it does

The Senior Commitment Post Generator cuts a ten step process down to a two step process. The senior will fill out their name, college, major, school color, a photo of themself and a logo, and the Generator will spit out a beautiful, standardized commitment post. This commitment post is then sent to a private email account owned by the instagram account manager. All the account manager has to do it download the png file from the email and hit the post button!

how it works currently: the account either has a google form for the seniors to enter their info or the manager asks the seniors to direct message their info. the account manager has to open a new post layout, retype ALL of the information sent by the senior, edit all the font sizes and spacing, choose a good logo and color, and then post. incredibly inefficient process for such a standardized post.

How we built it

We used python's Flask library for the server, webflow for HTML and design, and heroku to host the website. We used many python libraries such as PIL for image manipulation, render_template to display the HTML templates, and flask-mail for the email functionality.

Challenges we ran into

NOTE: heroku demo doesn't yet show the generated image, but the local version works perfectly.

At first, we had trouble getting the server to pick up the image files uploaded by the user. Once we figured that out, most of our challenges related Heroku hosting. The live website doesn't yet show the generated image, so we need to figure out why Heroku is blocking the upload. However, it works perfectly on localhost, which is shown in the demo.

We also had some trouble making the front-end responsive. Although it worked fine on our computers, the formatting and design was really awkward on phones, ipads, and other computer models. However, with the help of webflow and a few cups of coffee, our project is responsive for all devices.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

we're proud of learning multiple new python libraries and building such a simple yet innovative solution to a problem faced by thousands of student account managers every year. We're also proud of working with the flask email plug in.

What we learned

We had never used the PIL library before or done much image manipulation with Python, so we learned how to do that. We also learned how many things break down in the transition from local hosting to hosting on Heroku.

What's next for Senior Commitments CO'25

Our high school is going to use our Senior Commitment Post Generator to run our class of 21 instagram account! We need to work out the kinks with heroku file uploading and fix some minor bugs, but we plan to have hundreds of seniors use it.