--- a/include/common.inc.php
+++ b/include/common.inc.php
@@ -1,8 +1,19 @@
 <?php
+
+date_default_timezone_set("Australia/Sydney");
+
+$basePath = "";
+if (strstr($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'], "alaveteli/")
+        || strstr($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'], "admin/")
+        || strstr($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'], "lib/")
+        || strstr($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'], "include/"))
+    $basePath = "../";
 
 include_once ('couchdb.inc.php');
 include_once ('template.inc.php');
+require_once $basePath.'lib/Requests/library/Requests.php';
 
+Requests::register_autoloader();
 # Convert a stdClass to an Array. http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.object.php#102735
 
 function object_to_array(stdClass $Class) {
@@ -33,7 +44,26 @@
     # Typecast to (object) will automatically convert array -> stdClass
     return (object) $array;
 }
-?>
 
+function dept_to_portfolio($deptName) {
+    return trim(str_replace("Department of", "", str_replace("Department of the", "Department of", $deptName)));
+} 
+function phrase_to_tag ($phrase) {
+    return str_replace(" ","_",str_replace("'","",str_replace(",","",strtolower($phrase))));
+}
+function local_url() {
+    return "http://" . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . rtrim(dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']), '/\\') . "/";
+}
+function GetDomain($url)
+{
+$nowww = ereg_replace('www\.','',$url);
+$domain = parse_url($nowww);
+if(!empty($domain["host"]))
+    {
+     return $domain["host"];
+     } else
+     {
+     return $domain["path"];
+     }
+}
 
-