Tracking Phorum unread msgs

Hi, I am new to PHP and am working on a Phorum project and have this problem: I need to show how many msgs posted are unread, I understand in the source code in list.php file a cookie is set to store the id of the latest msg the user has read in the forum, so I only need to query the backend database and select a count of those newly creatd msgs who have larger id than that cookie, but somehow when I edit the manage.php file, it does not recognize the cookie(I guess it is $$new_cookie or "phorum-new-$ForumTableName"). Any guess what might be the problem or my idea is just wrong? Thanks. ============================================================== My code: $sql2="select count(id) from $rec->table_name where $rec->id > $$new_cookie"; and the Error: Warning: Using uninitialized variable $new_cookie in admin/pages/manage.php on line 45 =============================================================== hxl _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.