[tomotron]

^^ I think we're basically doing the same thing there?

When i try to run this and print the results using "echo $avatarurl;" for example I get nothing. It doesn't display noavatar.gif which should display if $avatarurl is empty.

I can replace,

$avatarurl = fetch_avatar_url($avatarid);
with
$avatarurl = 1;

and the script runs and I can display the results (which are 1), so my issue lies with the fetch_avatar_url($avatarid); portion which doesn't seem to be pulling the info it's supposed to.
Do I need to include other files to access that function?