[Lynne]

OK, I'm not understanding something.... when you talk about the header template, you are talking about the regular vb header template, right? Not a special header template you wrote for another page. And in the header template, you have written the word "$notifications_total" that is giving the total in your vb pages but not your external page, right? Are you evaling the header template yourself, or is it getting evaled in the global.php file like normal?

And it sounds like you *are* trying to use a plugin to include your stuff. You said you were using the global_start plugin for your code. Is that not right? So, that is running the global_start plugin on your external page.

Perhaps you need to start posting your code, cuz I'm getting confused now with what you are doing.