can't get sessions outside of vbulletin

[bradthor]

I am trying to get vbulletin session variables eg: userID and username from an external page/file in the parent directory of vbulletin.
I have followed the steps suggested for this process as follows.
first i declare

PHP Code:

  <?php global $vbulletin; ?>

then I include global.php with the following code.

PHP Code:

<?php
    $savedir = getcwd(); 
    chdir('/home/base/public_html/forum/');
    include('global.php'); 
    chdir($savdir);  
    ?>

i would then echo data like the following code

PHP Code:

<?php echo $vbulletin->userinfo['username']; ?>

This works perfectly inside the vbulletin directory however it returns Unregistered forusername and 0 for userid.

I have checked that
1.Path to Save Cookies set to "Suggested Settings '/' "
2.$bbuserinfo['userid'] doesnt work
3.$vbulletin->userinfo['userid'] and $vbulletin->userinfo['username'] return 0 and Unregistered respectively
4.code is correct for vbulletin version 4.2.3 as suggested

Can anyone advise me how to correctly get the vbulletin session variables(userid and username)/

PHP Code:

$vbulletin->userinfo 


array of the current logged in user in an external directory to the vbulletin installation.
Please feel free to ask for any additional info.
Thanks a ton.