Note that you still have a typo, but maybe it's only in your email messages: class simpleConstructer { function __construct() { echo "running the constructor"; } } $test = new simpleConstructor(); The class is misspelled; it should be simpleConstructor. As a side note, it's common convention to name classes with a leading capital letter, e.g. SimpleConstructor. That's just convention, though, and I'm sure it differs in some languages. Even in PHP stdClass doesn't, but most other classes do. David