trying to inlude php code - custom variable not echoing in template

[tyler45]

hi,

following the instructions here:
http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/t..._externalfiles

i have created a plugin which has the following code

ob_start();
include('/www/sites/mysite.com/htdocs/extra/blog.php');
$blog_rss = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

the file mysite.com/extra/blog.php displays the content perfectly. however when i try to echo the variable $blog_rss in one of my templates, nothing happens. plugins are active.

it's just not being captured and echoed out as a variable in a vbulletin template.

any help is much appreciated.

tks

(p.s. i have tried testing with just html as in the example in the link above, but this doesn't work either)

UPDATE

the same plugin works fine on the same forum running PHP4 (we are in the process of moving hosts).

what kind of setting in PHP5 is preventing this from working?