Ok heres the deal.
I have a plugin that has a sidebar widget, so surprises there.
The plugin in question forced you to manually install the sidebar widget if thats what you want. As this is MU and users don't have access to theme templates, they are bound to use the sidebar widget.
So instead of causing them confusion i copied that sidebar widget into the widget directory and deleted it within the plugin. Great, it functions as it should and now the user isn't forced to click "install the widget" in the plugin management screen.
Now, i thought, if i checked for the plugin, i could show or hide the widget accordingly. No problems i thought, i'll just check for it as i would in a template.
So
'<?php if (function_exists('useronline')): ?>
------ DO THAT WIDGET STUFF DONT YA KNOW
<?php endif; ?>'
However this doesn't work for some reason. Am i missing something here ?