They should be declared static if you're accessing them like so, yes. I will wait until you've further tested that, however, before we go any further so we remain on the same page.

As for suppressing warnings of session_start, I do this because of the following addition:

Thus suppressing it will ensure no notice is shown, but will nevertheless guarantee that a session is started. However, with that said, programmers should really be ensuring it is started themselves, and so those 2 error suppressing lines -- 1 in each function, should be removed when in the capable hands of a competent programmer.

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