You want to create a "Custom HTML/PHP" block and make sure you select the "PHP" radio button in the Content Type section. Then you need to "return" the output instead of printing it.
Try using this code:
PHP Code:
$domain = 'http://openvix.co.uk/';
$StatusFile = "./feeds/status";
$states = array('stable', 'un-stable', 'updating');
if(($currentState = @file_get_contents($domain.$StatusFile)) !== false)
{
$currentState = intval(trim($currentState));
}
else
{
$currentState = 2;
}
return '<img src="'.$domain.$states[$currentState].'.png" class="statusimage" alt="OpenViX status: '.$states[$currentState].'" />';
Of course the "Cache Time" setting will control how often it updates. If you want every page request to check you could set it to 0, but if you have a busy forum it could take a lot of server time, so it would be better to set it to at least 1, if it's acceptable to have it update only once per minute.