Why doesn't this code to display avatars work?

[tomotron]

I'm trying to display avatars (hosted in the filesystem) on a non-vb page. Basically, I'm supplying a userid and want to display the avatar...

PHP Code:


$avatarid = 1;

require_once('./includes/functions_user.php');

$avatarurl = fetch_avatar_url($avatarid);
        if ($avatarurl[0])
        {
            $avatarurl = $avatarurl[0];
        }
        else 
        {
            $avatarurl = "noavatar.gif";
    } 


$avatarurl never contains any data

From all the examples I've read it seems like this *should* work, am I making a stupid mistake? Any help is appreciated!

--------------- Added [DATE]1239745335[/DATE] at [TIME]1239745335[/TIME] ---------------

also, just to be clear this file resides in my vbulletin directory so the path to functions_user.php should be good.