Hi Lynne....thanks so much for your reply.
No, I did not, all I did was what I posted above. I assumed (sorry, I know that's a bad thing to do) that since it's all meshed in with vB that the variables would be available for the CMS files, and I also assumed that since the CMS outputs the forum info fine, that it *should* output the statusicon data also.
So, I guess my next question would be if the variable isn't available for the widget, can you tell me how to make it so?