i had a quick look at -- http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/developer/MontanaMike    but could not see any plugins. so - not sure which one has problems..

The plugin in question was not suitable for submission to the community.  I started with the mycustomtext plugin and added my own php code talking to my own sql tables. I hoped to gradually start using elgg functions as I learn them but I'm not there yet.

The question in this case is simple.  Is there anything in 1.8.5 that would affect the simple form submission (post) and $_POST access to the data.  If not, then I have a problem in my code.  I've been looking at this for 3 days now and I validated the code using an online tool.

I don't believe there's anything that would prevent it...

Though it would be much better to use the form inputs and built in sanitization with get_input()

$_POST and supporting HTML, JS, PHP code are all merely standard languages. Yep, Elgg would not be doing anything to interfere, so if the code is not working, perhaps because of 'a problem in the code', then anyone would have to look at the code to try to figure what's wrong.. 

 I'm on day 3 of debuging this one problem and when I find it I'm sure it will be something stupid I did.  Gracias for the feedback.

@MontanaMike   If you don't use elgg_view_form then you shoud insert the security token in your form as follow:

<form action="your action url" method="post">
         <?php echo elgg_view('input/securitytoken');?>

          ....

</form>