ok my mistake, i was saving the link and saving the wp-plugins code also, so i installed it, it appeared in the plugins, acitvated it and worked like a treat, except it gave me some funny errors in the admin side
i had a load of these above the admin panel
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/arcadia/public_html/wp-content/plugins/front_page_cats.php:2) in /home/arcadia/public_html/wp-admin/admin.php on line 13
any ideas?