hmm, i have tried both public and private system with the following:

tmp (as my temporary folder)
/var/www/vhosts/example.com/private as my downloads folder

the private file is set to 777. is the temp folder supposed to be in the webroot (ie should it located at httpdocs/tmp? or alongside the webroot like the private folder? ( i dont have permissions to create a folder alongside the web root from my shared host accoount, although they altered the open_basedir restriction for me to make my private file writable so i guess they would set up another folder there if necessary.

So I guess what I'm asking is, if I did set my temp folder to /tmp rather than tmp, where is that located?

Hope this makes sense! Still finding the relative/absolute thing a little confusing, thanks for your patience and help.