OK, I've made some headway partly from similar issues in other posts. It turns out the LoadHtml wasn't working either so I suspected it had something to do with the paths. I'm new to PHP but it looks like Windows (which I'm on) doesn't declare a ROOT variable. For others struggling with the same, you can declare it by pasting this at the top of the code:

 

// let's make sure the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] variable is set
if(!isset($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'])){ if(isset($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])){
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = str_replace( '\\', '/', substr($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'], 0, 0-strlen($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])));
}; };
if(!isset($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'])){ if(isset($_SERVER['PATH_TRANSLATED'])){
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = str_replace( '\\', '/', substr(str_replace('\\\\', '\\', $_SERVER['PATH_TRANSLATED']), 0, 0-strlen($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])));
}; };
// $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is now set - you can use it as usual...

 

 

thanks Toby