First off, I appreciate any help I can get. Here is my issue, I'm making a call to a DB then depending on the data from one column I'm displaying the data from a second column. The problem I'm getting is that even though I know the data in the column I cannot get my if statement to recognize the "true" part of the statement. Here is the code. <?php include('dbconnect.php'); $query="SELECT runtime FROM missionruntime"; $query1="SELECT start FROM missionruntime"; $runtime=mysql_query($query); $start=mysql_query($query1); if ( $start == 2006-04-19 13:51:59 ) { echo "SERVER DOWN"; } else { echo mysql_result($runtime,"runtime"); } ?> Now I know that $start = 2006-04-19 13:51:59 but it will not display SERVER DOWN. It just displays a blank page. Since the data type is varchar(20) do I have to specify my = statement differently?