thanks for the reply Jason
Re the 2nd code block, I am able to get to a certain point:
<?php
$PageContents = new WA_MySQLi_RS("PageContents",$DBConnection,1);
$PageContents->setQuery("SELECT * FROM special_offers WHERE OffersID = ? OR Permalink = ? AND Live = 1");
$PageContents->bindParam("s", "".$_GET['id'] ."", "-1"); //colname
$colname_PageContentsPerm->bindParam("s", "".$_GET['perm'] ."", "-1"); //colname
$PageContents->execute();
?>
but its the line from the original that I cannot see how to incorporate as mysqli:
GetSQLValueString($colname_PageContents, "text"),GetSQLValueString($colname_PageContentsPerm, "text"));