by Patrick O'Keefe (Patrick)
phpBBHacks.com Administrator/Webmaster

Share Your Thoughts

A regular face in the phpBBHacks.com community for many years, Nicolas Coustures (Abble CoSa NoStrA) has released a wide array of styles and templates for both phpBB 2 and 3, including Soul City, which was the recipient of the Template/Style of the Year award in the phpBBHacks.com Awards 2008. He has ranked on the Top 5 Style/Template Authors of the Year lists for the last 3 years, as well.

His most popular works include the AceB Style Template, PSP Template, Buziness Board 2.0, Naruto Shippuuden and Coffee Time Olympus.

Interview

A lot of people know you as a style author. Can you tell us more about who you are, beyond that, personally and professionally?

I am a French boy, 35 years old, married with two children (1 boy and 1 girl). I have owned restaurant for 2 years, but when I was in school, I learned about restoration. But, I also work take on other jobs, such as a DJ in many hip-hop and house techno clubs, animator in a holiday center and restoration, too.

Personally, I am a little lonely (by choice) and a little wild, too. My passions include art (I dream of being able to draw), design, Photoshop, soccer (Olympique de Marseille Ultra) and more.

How did you end up developing for phpBB? 

Along with some friends, I wanted to create a forum for football in 2005. At first, we installed it quickly, in 5 minutes, without a domain name. I quickly saw that we were limited in many ways with the product. At that time, I did not know what HTML and CSS were and had no training. But, I got my hands dirty and I was hooked.

Since then, I have never stopped.

Your most downloaded creation currently available on phpBBHacks.com is AceB Style Template with 4,940 downloads. What led you to create it and what do you think about it's popularity?

Seriously, I do not even remember developing most of this style. I did this template for a member of your forums who wanted a template like Aceboard's design for his phpBB 2.

It was really just an imitation and I don't take a lot of glory from the creation of this template. ^^ But, the result was good, clean and readable. Perhaps that is the key to it's success.

phpBBHacks.com is 10 years old. Your first submission to the database was on April 3, 2006. What thoughts or memories does that passage of time bring up for you?

It's the age of my boy, five years already. We grow old, dear Patrick and it does not work out...

Depending on your perspective, whether you are a phpBB user, an author or someone else, phpBBHacks.com may hold a different meaning and offer something different to each individual person. When you think about this site and community, what comes to mind for you personally?

It was for me the first international open system where I could distribute my styles as they were only on French support at phpBB-fr.com at first. I met other authors, others users with different needs and it was important for me to have that global overview of my work.

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