cheers that does work, thanks!
Although having problems now because the login form it redirects me to tries to run login.php under the /apd/ directory. But I will sort that by hardcoding the form action to be /forums/login.php, rather than just login.php, which should sort it. Will just have to remember I changed that if I ever move the forums.
Next problem though is finding where in the distribution the form HTML code is!

sure I will find it eventually.