Hi thanks for your reply but you may as well have written it in arabic for all my understanding lol.

Allow me to explain - i'm absolutely new to php - had never even seen it before now beginning to research - i'm completely self taught html and some database and so what you have said makes no sense to me whatsoever. me being blonde doesn't help either lol so i wanna keep it very simple. I'm sure it would be a lot of fun to work it out myself but i work full time (not in IT) and have three kids so thats gonna take quite a while. I think my best bet is to just work through tutorial after tutorial, however long it takes - unless you wanna sell me your code lol - kidding

Thank you all for trying to help but i fear its just way over my head for now and maybe i should find another less confusing project to take up my 'spare' time (like naughts and crosses lol) - unfortunately i just don't 'get it'