Top 25 Authors: Smartor (Hoang Ngoc Tu)

[Patrick]

For the 10th anniversary celebration, I poured over years and years of contributions to name the top 25 authors in of the phpBBHacks.com era (2001-2011).

It was a difficult task, but I managed to do it. One of the 25 authors is Smartor (Hoang Ngoc Tu).

When you're talking about phpBB 2 hack authors, Smartor (born Hoang Ngoc Tu) is one of the handful of people that the conversation must begin with. Many of his works were widely adopted by phpBB 2 users and he released 11 hacks and 1 template that were each downloaded at least 10,000 times.

Check out my profile of him here: http://www.phpbbhacks.com/10thanniversa ... goc-tu.php

Unfortunately, I am no longer in contact with Smartor and was not able to contact him to request an interview.

Thanks,

Patrick

[Wicher]

Indeed Smartor has made some great mods, i used and am using some of his mods.
Maybe he can be located at http://smartor.is-root.com/

[Patrick]

Thanks for that, Wicher. I am not actually sure if that site is under Smartor's control any longer, unfortunately, and the forums do not appear to be actively maintained.

Smartor created so many great works. We use some of them here (like the Quick Reply Hack with Quote). They stand on their own, really, given their popularity. ezPortal was so widely adopted because it provided a simple, easy portal page without a lot of extra stuff or layers and layers of features. He was a very important author who made some amazing contributions.

Thanks,

Patrick

[Ptirhiik]

I must say, Smartor has always been one of my favorite author. Not the way he was programming, not the way it was communicating about his hacks, but the guy himself: very kind, always available and listening with a great simplicity. I definitivaly miss him !