also how would i do an IF that checks to see if the image source has a http:// at the beginning. if not then force it to use http://blabla.com/imagename. this line below returns a users avatar. <?php if (!(strcmp($row_rsForumUser['ID_MEMBER'], $row_rsMember['ID_MEMBER']))) { echo "<img width=\"80\" height=\"80\" src=\""; echo $row_rsForumUser['avatar']; echo "\"\>";} ?> right now if it is a custom icon the users has it stored on there own server like http://paulihrig.com/tl/jellybayby.jpg but what messes the line above up is that if the user has it stored on our server then it would only display "batman.gif" with now starting http://soon.com/ so i need to force it in there.. any ideas. thanks -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php